Frank Sinatra’s only directorial effort None But The Brave is a dark - but cliched - anti-war epic. Not only is Frank Sinatra one of the most successful music artists of all time, he was also one of the biggest movie stars too. Some of his most popular movies include the original Ocean’s 11, From Here To Eternity, Guy And Dolls, and The Manchurian Candidate.
While he may have been a movie star he proved with a few of his performances, including Manchurian Candidate and The Man With The Golden Arm - where he played a character with a serious drug addiction - he could really act too. In 1968 he appeared in The Detective, an adaptation of the novel by Roderick Thorp. Thorp later penned a sequel novel where main character Joe Leland is trapped in a skyscraper by terrorists during a Christmas party. If that sounds familiar, its because the book was later turned into Die Hard. By virtue of his original contract, Sinatra was offered the chance to reprise his role but he passed, having retired from movies following a cameo in 1984’s Cannonball Run II.
Sinatra only stepped behind the camera once, for 1965’s None But The Brave. This movie was the first American/Japanese co-production, with Toto (Godzilla) distributing the movie in Japan while Warner Bros handled its release in America. It takes place on a small island in the Pacific where a group of stranded Japanese soldiers are building a boat to escape. An American transport crashlands on the same island after being shot down, so naturally, there’s some tension between the two groups. This escalates to the point the Americans try to steal the boat, which is destroyed by a grenade, ensuring everybody remains stranded.
Following this, None But The Brave finds the groups entering into an uneasy truce, where the island is divided and they trade with one another. When the Americans are finally able to radio for help, this leads to one last, pointless gun battle that leaves few survivors. It paints a bleak picture of war, literally ending on the message “Nobody Ever Wins.” Sinatra shows he was adept at staging battle scenes and directing himself, and he also gets a great performance from co-star Tatsuya Mihashi as Lt. Kuroki, leader of the Japanese platoon. Commendably for the era, the Japanese actors are allowed to speak their own language, with some prints even omitting subtitles.
Sadly, None But The Brave suffers from numerous cliches with the characters, including Clint Walker (The Dirty Dozen) as Captain Bourke, mostly being archetypes instead of fleshed-out human beings. The message is also painfully on the nose, but at least it’s earnest. None But The Brave attempted to look at the conflict from both sides and featured a good split between its American and Japanese characters. Clint Eastwood would later attempt something similar with Flags Of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima.
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