Kubrick's brave anti-war film remains one of the most cool-headed assaults on cold-blooded murder ever filmed. A Korean War-era audience could take little comfort in the fact that these scenes of ritualized slaughter were set during World War I. The story, said to have been based on a true incident in the French army in 1916, traces the court-martial and execution of three soldiers chosen as scapegoats for the failure of a suicidal French infantry attack against superior German forces. A suave, uncaring Adolph Menjou and a pathologically paranoid George Macready are the generals who shield themselves from blame; Kirk Douglas is entirely convincing as the white knight who challenges their scheme. Paths of Glory is a stunning masterpiece of composition and cinematography, comparable in its beauty and pathos to the classic World War I anti-war films (All Quiet on the Western Front, etc.). But in its concentration on lunacy in the high command, and in its brittle cynicism, it is pure Kubrick. Dr. Strangelove and, later, Full Metal Jacket would echo the same themes into the atomic age and Vietnam.