The war’s just begun, we’re definitely not winning, and your assignment is to make a movie about a tragic defeat that could be the first of many tragic defeats for the U.S.A. Street Date Aug/ available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring: Brian Donlevy, Robert Preston, Macdonald Carey, William Bendix, Albert Dekker, Walter Abel, Mikhail Rasumny, Rod Cameron, Bill Goodwin, Damian O’Flynn, Frank Albertson, Hugh Beaumont, Barbara Britton, Hillary Brooke, Dane Clark, Frank Faylen, Mary Field, Alan Hale Jr., Richard Loo, James Millican, Jack Mulhall, Keith Richards, Phillip Terry, Mary Thomas, Wake Island Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1942 / B&w / 1:37 flat Academy / 88 min. Paramount’s careful morale-builder doesn’t exaggerate or sentimentalize the brutal fall of a tiny atoll in the Pacific, and stands as an example of filmmaking reaching for hope in the face of disaster. The war’s just begun, we’re definitely not winning, and the assignment was to make a movie about a tragic defeat that might be the first of many tragic defeats for the U.S.A. Never heard of Wake Island? Its fall terrified Americans at Christmas of 1941.