SPOILERS, people. Do not read this unless you want to know the ending.

I first watched this back when I was a little kid, in the early/mid-1980s.

And I remember being shocked at the end of the film; I couldn't believe that all of the good guys were killed and that the Japanese were able to overrun the American/Filipino position.

As the years went by and I got older I always found it fascinating that Bataan was able to be released right in the middle of America's involvement in World War II, considering the tragic ending of this film.

Oh, I know that the director, Tay Garnett, did not intend his film to be interpreted as pro-Japan or anti-U.S.A.; instead, as I read in a quote from Steven Spielberg in Newsweek on the eve of the release of his own film, Saving Private Ryan, Bataan could be understood as "victory in defeat" (or something like that; I read the article 20 years ago).

But yet, I still find the overall tone of Bataan just a tad subversive.

Of course, as others have pointed out, it was subversive for its time considering the fact that it depicted a multiracial military unit working together to achieve a goal; I've heard that supposedly, when Bataan was first released in 1943, there were some theaters in the American South which refused to show it.

Anyway, Bataan is one of my favorite films, and I just thought I'd share some of my thoughts on it to get the board started.