Yesterday's Enemy

1959

Drama / War

5
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 83% · 1 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 83%
IMDb Rating 7.1/10 10 1485 1.5K

army war correspondent world war ii burma jungle informant

Plot summary

Set during the Burma Campaign of World War 2, this is the story of courage and endurance of the soldiers struggling at close quarters against the enemy. The film examines the moral dilemmas ordinary men face during war, when the definitions of acceptable military action and insupportable brutality become blurred and distorted.

Director

Val Guest Photo
Val Guest

Top cast

Leo McKern Photo
Leo McKern as Max
Philip Ahn Photo
Philip Ahn as Yamazaki
Donald Churchill Photo
Donald Churchill as Elliott
Timothy Bateson Photo
Timothy Bateson as Simpson
720p.BluRay
869.22 MB
1280*544
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 34 min
Seeds 3

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by st-shot 8 / 10

Uncompromising look at the cruelty of war.

Yesterday's Enemy is a taut claustrophobic war film about a whittled down company of British soldiers caught behind the lines in Burma. It takes no sides other than to point out the absurd futility and dehumanization of individuals in war and the limited options they are faced with. It is a sober unromantic and highly provocative work that foreshadows the quagmire in Viet Nam and unapologetically addresses actions taken in the heat of battle far from the sideline moralizing out of harm's way. Captain Langford leads his lost patrol with a firm hand cajoling and threatening members of the unit to remain disciplined and vigilant. When they stumble upon an austere Burmese jungle village they are surprised by a fierce Japanese resistance attempting to protect a senior officer. With the village under control Langford seeks answers through intimidation, torture and finally execution of innocent locals. Eventually they are overwhelmed by the Japanese who adopt the same methods to get answers about their missing general.Despite it's sound stage jungle locale Yesterday's Enemy director Val Guest attains a very atmospheric feel of heat and pressure with the uncompromising downward thrust of the film as reality trumps morality. Stanley Baker's Langford and Gordon Jackson's Sgt. McKenzie remain stoically impressive throughout as they address the reality they are given while Guy Rolfe's Padre and Leo McKern's journalist Max ably bring balance and debate to the picture in arguing the other side.Yesterday's Enemy (even the title points out the absurdity of war) unromantic and dark vision offers no solutions but raises dozens of questions about the ugliness of war without flinching remaining with you long after the firing has ceased. It is Britain's Steel Helmet.
Reviewed by TheFearmakers 8 / 10

Stanley Baker's Greatest Performance

This Hammer WWII b-movie was originally a stage-play, and with the contained setting and tons of dialog it's apparent..But Stanley Baker turns in his greatest performance... a one-man show despite being surrounded by character-actors like faithful sergeant Gordon Jackson countered by idealistic reporter Leo McKern and priest Guy Rolfe, driving the central moral-quandary plot-line...Beginning with their troop of disheveled British soldiers, lost and trudging through the Burmese jungle, happening upon a two-hut village where Baker's no-nonsense captain figures he MUST scare an informer by killing two elderly locals...The best scenes occur during this first half when Baker's lethal, cold-blooded methods start becoming more clear and, because of the vital information gained, somewhat logical, and he never wavers to the ethical humanity in a village foreshadowing future Vietnam films (and their tropes) about murderous white soldiers...These include Brian De Palma's CASUALTIES OF WAR and Oliver Stone's Oscar-winning PLATOON, still paling to this low budget, obscure gem mostly thanks to Stanley Baker...Keeping up the same stubborn, determined intensity when the Japanese, led by an English-speaking, philosophizing Philip Ahn, turns the tables, and the adaptation becomes even more stagey and yet with tight, edgy suspense by Val Guest, one of Hammer's best directors, YESTERDAY'S ENEMY keeps the audience as locked-in as its unflappable leading man.
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