Featured Audience Ratings

• William D

  
  It's hard for me to believe, but until recently I didn't know what Marlon Brando's first movie was. It was an innocuous but well-meaning film with a flat, artless title: "The Men." Directed by the Austrian-born Fred Zinnemann (who became world-famous a few… More
  It's hard for me to believe, but until recently I didn't know what Marlon Brando's first movie was. It was an innocuous but well-meaning film with a flat, artless title: "The Men." Directed by the Austrian-born Fred Zinnemann (who became world-famous a few years later with such films as "High Noon" and "From Here to Eternity"), "The Men" plays like a TV Movie of the Week focused on a contemporary social issue. The issue was the struggle of young World War II veterans to re-integrate into American society, particularly those who had lost a limb or were in wheelchairs. The war had only been over a few years (Germany and Japan surrendered in 1945), so this was a pressing current issue. Brando plays the lead character, a handsome, rugged young man laid low by a gunshot wound to the spine. Not only has he lost the ability to walk (and have intercourse, which is hinted at several times), he has lost the will to live. He chases his devoted girlfriend away (Teresa Wright) and sinks deeper into depression. Several things happen that do lead to change, and this is nice to see. But "The Men" never really takes off. It remains a fairly engaging but mediocre work of journalism. Brando is surprisingly subdued. Thank God he had the guts the following year to release the whirlwind inside him with "A Streetcar Named Desire," which changed cinema history and earned him his first Oscar nomination. (He lost to Humphrey Bogart in "The African Queen.")

• jay n

  
  Good drama examining the difficulties faced by men paralyzed in the WWII. Brando is very good here minus the method affectations that marred a great deal of his later work. He's ably abetted by Teresa Wright who gives a customarily low key and effective performance.

• AJ V

  
  Brando's first performance in film, if you can find this movie I highly recommend watching it, especially if you're a fan of his (I don't know why you wouldn't be). This movie is realistic, dramatic, and romantic. I loved it.

• Mike T

  
  Marlon Brando's explosive debut performance is better than the film itself. Watching this man in his first starring role is an enormous novelty, and I was even more impressed than I expected. His fury and unflinching truth shine through more clearly than the script's flaws… More
  Marlon Brando's explosive debut performance is better than the film itself. Watching this man in his first starring role is an enormous novelty, and I was even more impressed than I expected. His fury and unflinching truth shine through more clearly than the script's flaws and the mediocre cast he accompanies the screen with.