3 Days in Malay
This is the second war film in two days for me where the star and director are the same person, and they both are working with archetypes and straightforward, morally black-and-white narratives. What separates Louis Mandylor’s “3 Days in Malay” from Johnny Strong’s “Warhorse One,” aside from the setting, is that Mandylor has Brandon Slagle, a genre filmmaker in his own right, to write the screenplay rather than writing it himself. That does make a difference, I think, having an actual writer on a project like this to tell the story, get the structure, and make the clichés work on the page so that, when you go behind the camera, you have someone who can help shape the material as filming commences. This is much more successful of a survival story set during war. I was engrossed.
Set in 1942, the film follows soldiers on an airbase during the Pacific campaign. Mandylor plays John Caputo, a boxer whose military career is in dire straights after an incident in the ring. Here, he’s reunited with an old friend (played by Donald Cerrone), but there’s tension between the two. As Caputo is settling in, though, the Japanese are attacking patrols keeping an eye out for forces; if the airbase- and that path- is taken, it could mean disaster for American forces. When the attack does come, it’s up to Caputo and others to hold the Japanese back until reinforcements can arrive.
One of the surprising parts of this film is that the action doesn’t really start until the second half of the movie. Prior to the first Japanese attack of the base, much of the film consists of life on the base, developing the characters, and we go with it. We see previous patrols get attacked, and a sense of what’s to come, but the character-building held my interest. The film has a good sense of period, and the film does resemble plenty of past WWII films; it even borrows the color filtering seen from projects like “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific.” I’m not saying Mandylor’s direction is great, or that the film is great, but in terms of working off of the iconography of earlier WWII movies, he knows what he’s doing. When the action does begin proper, it’s well-staged, and has the desired impact. The titular three days, where the patrol including Caputo and others have to hold off the Japanese, is successful in building tension, releasing it again, and getting to the point of drama that “Saving Private Ryan” did in its final standoff. If you’re a fan of WWII films, this one might work for you.
