It is quite amazing that a film with this many good actors could be as dull as it turns out to be. The only really passionate moment seems to be when Tab Hunter kisses his movie mother Jessie Royce Landis 'goodbye' as he heads out to go into the Army (not, as you would expect, when he has his arms around adorable Natalie Wood). Since David Janssen and James Garner were actually Army vets, they must have been astounded at the way Hunter's character is portrayed as being allowed to mouth off to superiors without consequence. Even I, when I worked for the Department of the Army as a civilian, if I had shown such an attitude to the ranking officers, would have had my behind bouncing down the sidewalk to the unemployment office. The theme seems to be about what does it take to make a boy become a man but it's done in such a perfunctory manner, it is, as the vernacular of the late 1950's would say, Dullsville.
Review of The Girl He Left Behind
