Walls of Boredom
On the retreat across the Philippines, ten thousand Japanese soldiers barricade them selves into Intramuros, the walled city which the Spanish built many years earlier. With there being no air strikes allowed due to an open city agreement the American and Filipino soldiers must find some other way to attack the walled city which is almost impregnable due to its 20ft thick walls. But first they must find away to rescue the thousands of civilians who are being held hostage in side.
"The Walls of Hell" is a very simple movie, civilian hostages in an old walled city and the good guys, Filipino soldiers lead by Americans trying to rescue them. There is no more than that simple premise, no great planning, no great history lesson, no fascinating subplots although there are subplots and generally it is a movie all about the simple set up.
Now maybe back in 1964 when "The Walls of Hell" was released this simple action filled war movie had an audience, I would imagine it was teen boys who just wanted war time heroics. But watching it now and "The Walls of Hell" really struggles to command the audience's attention with talking between characters who are never really introduced to us being uninteresting. In fairness the talking seems to be there only to fill in in-between the action which during the final 30 minutes is constant but it does make it a shallow movie all about the action and the noise rather than the story.
What this all boils down to is that "The Walls of Hell" did little for me as it never really created a story or characters but just threw us in at the deep end and then threw action at us.
