Supplies are dwindling. Troops are hopelessly outnumbered. But even in defeat there is victory. The defenders of the Philippines - including PT-boat skippers John Brickley (Robert Montgomery) and Rusty Ryan (John Wayne) - will give the U.S. war effort time to regroup after the devastation of Pearl Harbor.

Director John Ford's World War II tale knows its battle-scarred topic firsthand. Montgomery was himself a Pacific PT-boat commander and a valorous Bronze Star recipient. Ford filmed the Academy Award-winning documentary Battle of Midway. And Wayne creates a portrait of patriotic resolve as only he can. They Were Expendable salutes all who expended themselves during some of the war's bleakest hours.

John Ford's poetic adaptation of William White's book about a PT boat squadron in the South Pacific during World War II may be the best feature film on the war in that theater and is considered by some scholars, including British director Lindsay Anderson, as Ford's greatest work. Just before the outbreak of the war, Lt. John Brickley (Robert Montgomery) is assigned to take his Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron to Manila Bay to defend against a possible Japanese attack in the Philippines. Once there, he finds that the top brass, amused by the idea that the small crafts can be of use in combat, relegates the PT boat to messenger duty. Angered by that reaction, Brickley and his crew must wait for the war to begin to show what they can do. When it does, they shoot down three Japanese planes during an attack on their base, but when the base is closed Brick's squadron is reassigned to Bataan, where they once again are ordered to run messages, and Brickley's fiery executive officer, Lt. Rusty Ryan (John Wayne), fed up with such meaningless duty, asks to be transferred to a destroyer. The embodiment of Milton's tag that "they also serve who stand and wait," Ford's elegiac film pays tribute to all who donned a uniform during the war, whatever their role. Montgomery, who shared in the film's direction, gives the best noncomic performance of his career as the evenhanded CO. But in a visually arresting film that could provide a formidable emotional impact even without the use of sound, it's the eloquent compositions of director of photography Joseph H. August that resonate most powerfully.