Lions: The Young
| What Works | What Doesn’t | | :--- | :--- | | Brando’s nuanced, heartbreaking performance | Overlong and episodic structure | | Dean Martin’s surprisingly effective dramatic turn | Heavy-handed anti-Semitism subplot | | A rare Hollywood attempt to humanize a German soldier | Forced coincidences to unite the three leads | | Bleak, morally complex ending | Occasionally dated dialogue |
The Young Lions is a flawed but important film. It is too long, too preachy in spots, and structurally lumpy. But when it works—watching Brando’s Christian realize he has become the very evil he once dismissed, or watching Dean Martin’s Michael finally understand the cost of his own detachment—it achieves a mournful power.
In the golden age of the Hollywood war film, where heroism was often painted in broad, patriotic strokes, The Young Lions stands apart. It is not a film about battles and glory, but about the corrosive nature of ideology and the random, brutal education of three very different men. Clocking in at nearly three hours, it is an ambitious, sprawling epic that succeeds more often than it stumbles, anchored by three powerhouse performances that transcend the era’s studio conventions. The Young Lions
★★★½ (3.5/4) Recommendation: Essential viewing for Brando and Clift fans, and for anyone interested in the shift from WWII heroics to Cold War cynicism. Watch it for the performances and the ambition; forgive it its longueurs and its preaching.
Director Edward Dmytryk (a former member of the Hollywood Ten) handles the battle sequences with competent, if unspectacular, realism. The North African desert skirmishes and the final, fog-shrouded confrontation in a bombed-out German village are gritty but not revolutionary. | What Works | What Doesn’t | |
The film’s true ambition is philosophical. It asks: What makes a man fight? For Noah, it’s to prove his right to exist. For Michael, it’s about abandoning selfishness. For Christian, it’s about realizing he’s fighting for a lie.
This is not a war film for those seeking adrenaline. It is a war film for those who want to sit with the wreckage and ask hard questions about complicity, identity, and the lie of "good wars" fought by clean hands. In the golden age of the Hollywood war
The problem is that the film is to Irwin Shaw’s 700-page novel. It feels episodic, jumping from set piece to set piece. The coincidences required to bring these three men together in the same war (and ultimately the same forest) strain credibility. Moreover, the American scenes—especially the barracks-room anti-Semitism—feel like a lecture, while the German scenes have a more complex, shaded dread.