“Prewitt, the bugler-hero of James Jones' Dreiserian novel about Army life in Hawaii before Pearl Harbor, is a soldier who loves the army...yet he believes that ‘if a man don't go his own way, he's nothin'.' The conflict between his status and his determination to have his rights is the mainspring of the action.... (The) movie succeeds by the smooth efficiency of Fred Zinnemann's lean, intelligent direction, and by the superlative casting. Montgomery Clift's bony, irregularly handsome Prewitt is a hardhead, a limited man with a one-track mind, who's intensely appealing.... Burt Lancaster has a role that's just about perfectly in his range as Sergeant Warden, the man's man who's also a ladies' man (the lady is Deborah Kerr); Frank Sinatra, in his first straight acting part, surprised audiences with a softly modulated, likeable performance as Maggio.... This was the movie of its year, as On the Waterfront was to be the next year...because these films brought new attitudes to the screen that touched a social nerve.... Yet...Clift's innovative performance was buried in the public praise for Sinatra and Lancaster. It was almost as if the public wanted to forget Prewitt's troublesome presence. The remarkably compact screenplay is by Daniel Taradash...” Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies