Mister Kennedy

PT 109. Warner Bros. has approached the story of J.F.K.'s 1943 heroism with a reverence usually reserved for a New Testament spectacle: not a chapter or verse of Robert Donovan's bestseller is omitted. This accounts for the film's nearly 21-hour running time. It does not account, however, for turning the first hour or so into a miniaturized Mister Roberts. All the old hands are on board. There is the salty Regular Navy-man who makes things tough for the fresh-water PT-boat jockeys; there are the stock-comic enlisted men with true hearts and rural accents; there is even the inevitable goldbricker who works always at being transferred Stateside. When this character dares to suggest to Mister Kennedy that with his pull in Washington he could get both of them out of the Pacific in no time, he is scuttled with the reply: "Sorry, Rogers--and I'm surprised at you."

Both crewmen and superiors are forever saying things to Kennedy that 20 years later they probably wish they had not. "You got a brain like a seed pearl," splutters one sailor after Lieut, (j.g.) Kennedy has accidentally dumped a bucket of dirty water over him. And the running gag all through PT 109 is oh-boy-think-of-talking-like-that-to-the-President-of-the-U.S. But nothing upsets Kennedy's dedication to duty, and sometimes he sounds as if he were rehearsing an inaugural address at some happier future time. "Think these men will do a good job for us?" asks Ty Hardin, the 109's exec as he ponders the crew. "If we do a good job for them," replies Kennedy.

Once the reels of saltwater drag racing are out of the way (PT 109 wins the race, but smashes into the dock when Cowboy Kennedy slams the engines into reverse at high speed and conks them out), the film takes on a measure of verve and dash. Best scene is the nighttime patrol when, running without lights, Kennedy's PT suddenly comes under the prow of a blacked-out Japanese destroyer and PT 109's plywood hull is sliced through like an orange crate. There is a moment of silence, then a crackling as the sea becomes molten with flaming fuel, and in the night come the terrified cries of men calling out to their buddies.

The real-life yarn of how the survivors made their three-mile swim to the nearest island is good cinema. And for once, the heroics are real, not faked, when, swimming at the head of the burned and dazed men, Kennedy tows one of the worst injured along by holding the straps of his life jacket between his teeth. But once they reach land, the note of remember-who-this-is-all-about surfaces coyly again: one of the crew tosses a pair of waterlogged boots to another, wisecracking: "Put a high gloss on these, porter. They're for my friend when he gets back to Hyannis Port."

As a vignette of heroism in the far greater story of the war in the South Pacific, PT 109 would have made a serviceable little picture for the double-bill circuits. But blown up out of proportion in deference to the man who is now the Great Big Skipper, and yakked up out of believability by miles of comic relief, it has become a wide-screen campaign poster. One merciful antidote: smiling Cliff Robertson has been allowed by Director Leslie Martinson to play Skipper Jack with vigor, not vigah; there isn't a single hand-stabbing J.F.K. mannerism in sight.

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