Review – The Young Lions

I have trouble putting movies like this in their proper historical context. From my 21st century viewpoint, this is a parade of clichés. Our three heroes (Montgomery Clift, Dean Martin and Marlon Brando) are a gentle-yet-stubborn nerd who becomes a war hero, a singer who wants to be treated like the rest of the soldiers, and a brash German officer suffering pangs of conscience. But I wonder if this wasn’t somewhat more groundbreaking back in 1958. In any event, the story has enough twists and turns to sustain the running time. I’ve seen plenty of World War Two movies way worse than this. Mildly amusing