theinnerchef If you liked MASH TV series you will be shocked to watch this. It is so obvious that the creators of MASH watched this film. The sets, lighting, the camera shots were all here in this film. Watch this film and see a 5e3 YO Bogart still pulling a great performance with his friends June and Keenan.

utgard14 Snoozer of a war picture about an Army surgeon (Humphrey Bogart) and a wide-eyed young nurse (June Allyson) falling in love on the battlefront. Notable (I suppose) for focusing on a MASH unit years before the film and TV series made that more widely known. But really it's not a very good picture. For a war movie, it's pretty dull and for a romance, it's nauseating. Bogart and Allyson have no chemistry. I've never been a big June Allyson fan to begin with, so that didn't help matters any. Poor Bogie, in his fifties at this point, plays a character that's supposed to be some kind of Romeo with the ladies. This movie has some of the most cringeworthy work I've ever seen from him. I had to look away at times because it was so awkward. It's actually kind of painful to watch the love scenes. Anyway, it's not something I would recommend unless you are a Bogart or Allyson completist. Best thing about it is the supporting work from Keenan Wynn and Robert Keith.

tieman64 A precursor to Robert Altman's "MASH", Richard Brooks' "Battle Circus" stars the inimitable Humphrey Bogart as a world-weary surgeon in the middle of war-torn Korea. Bogart is as watchable as always, but much of the film consists of a by-the-numbers romantic subplot in which he romances a new nurse (June Allyson, always miscast).As with most films set during the Korean War, "Battle Circus" entirely ignores politics. Elsewhere Brooks serves up a number of mildly tense sequences, like one in which nurses talk a wounded Korean soldier out of detonating a live grenade. Brooks would go on to direct a number of superior films, one of his best being "Elmer Gantry".Today, the US' bloody occupation of Korea has all but been erased from history. After WW2, the US hastily separated Korea (Roosevelt would suggest the separation to Stalin without even consulting the Koreans), essentially splitting it in two and giving the North to Russia whilst keeping the South for itself. This was meant to be a temporary division, but as was in the case in Vietnam (another country arbitrarily cut in half by the US), the US soon freaked out when it learnt that the Koreans wanted independence and were unanimously backing the Republican Party. Refusing to allow genuine self-determination to take root in Korea, and determined to destroy the majority supported Korean People's Republic party, the US hastily began scuttling all attempts at unifying the north and south, backed dictators in the south (some descendants of the old aristocracy), began supporting the local land-owning elite, outlawed the KPR and set about murdering "dissidents". On the Island of Cheju alone, as many as 60,000 of its 300,000 residents were murdered. South Korea, assisted by US forces, then conducted a ruthless campaign of cleansing the south of all dissidents, usually identifying them as "communists". Estimates of murdered civilians range anywhere from 400,000 to 800,000 by the time the hot war "officially" broke out in June 1950. The message was clear: you can have self-determination, but only if you do what we say.5/10 – For Bogart fans only. See "To Have and Have Not".

panzerthegreatnterrible What nobody has mentioned is that this movie shows how a mobile surgical unit actually functions, in loving detail, which MASH never did. Makes for an interesting watch. It does for a MASH unit what Air Force did for a bomber -- shows how everybody cooperates to make the thing work. One of Brooks' better films actually. His films are usually more preachy than this.The big flaw is June Allyson, who is, IMO, miscast in every movie she made, but never more so than here. Bogart is as professional as always, and Keenan Wynn gives one of his best performances. Philip Ahn, who I'm familiar with because of his work in silly B pictures and serials, does well in a serious though brief part here.