None but the Brave

During the Pacific Theater of World War II, a platoon of seventeen Japanese soldiers is stranded on an island in the Solomon Archipelago, cut off from the outside world after their radio equipment is destroyed in a storm. Lieutenant Kuroki keeps his men firmly in hand as he supervises the construction of a boat for their escape.

One day, the Japanese platoon witnesses a dogfight between an IJNAS A6M Zero and a USMC F4U Corsair escorting an R4D Skytrain transport plane bound for Peleliu. The Zero and Corsair destroy each other, while the crippled Skytrain crash-lands on the island, stranding the survivors aboard, including Marine Aircraft Wing Captain Dennis Bourke, chief pharmacist's mate Francis, 2nd Lieutenant Blair, Sergeant Bleeker, and their platoon of U.S. Marine infantry, totaling nineteen Americans. When the Marines discover evidence of Japanese presence, they realize the island was cut off for the landings at Cape Torokina in 1943, and Blair rallies the Marines but reluctantly transfers leadership to Bourke, who orders them to make a base and stay out of combat. That night, Bourke and Corporal Craddock ambush the Japanese platoon when they approach the Skytrain, shooting Lance Corporal Hirano in the leg before retreating.

The next day, the Marines learn of the Japanese platoon's boat and spot a U.S. Navy warship searching for the lost Skytrain. A skirmish on the beach kills a Marine and a Japanese soldier, but they are interrupted when the warship misidentifies the Marines as Japanese and shells the beach before departing. Later, Craddock tries to capture Japanese Private Okunda, but Okunda's aloof behavior leads Craddock to happily trade him cigarettes for catfish and release him, confusing Kuroki when he learns about it. After losing another Marine to an ambush at a freshwater spring, the Marines mount an assault on the Japanese boat, hoping to steal it and reach Santa Isabel to send rescue, but in the ensuing battle Kuroki destroys the boat with a grenade while both sides suffer three killed and one injured each; another Japanese soldier disarms himself but is shot and killed while trying to beg the Marines for water, demoralizing the Americans and Japanese into retreating. As the Japanese platoon holds a funeral, Hirano tries to commit suicide over his leg injury, which has left him unable to fight, prompting Kuroki to negotiate a truce with Bourke for Francis to treat Hirano, whose leg has to be amputated, in exchange for food and water.

With the truce in effect, the Americans and Japanese decide to cooperate and live side-by-side on their own beaches, though they often cross the border to cooperate or spy on each other. The truce is nearly broken when Air Crewman Keller wounds a Japanese soldier spying on their secret radio post, but their standoff is interrupted when a storm hits the island, prompting the Americans and Japanese to work together to build a flood wall. The Japanese base is destroyed and the Skytrain is pulled into the sea, but Kuroki rescues a Marine that falls into the flood waters, and the soldiers survive the storm. That night, Kuroki reflects on his wife Keiko who he married just before his deployment, while Francis discusses Bourke's fiancée Lorie, who was killed in an air raid the night she proposed. The next day, Okunda is killed by a shark while fishing, and the Americans and Japanese hold a joint funeral for him.

Keller reestablishes radio contact with the U.S. Navy and arranges rescue, but Kuroki overhears them and ends the truce when Bourke and Blair offer that the Japanese platoon surrender when rescue arrives, prompting both sides to reluctantly resume hostilities. As the USS Walker (DD-517) approaches, the eight remaining Japanese soldiers ambush the eleven remaining Americans at the beach on Kuroki's orders, sparking a pointless firefight that kills all of the soldiers except Francis, Bourke, Blair, Bleeker, and Corporal Ruffino. As the surviving Americans collect their dead and dejectedly await rescue, Francis finds Kuroki's journal and hands it to Bourke, who muses that one day he may travel to Japan and return it to Keiko in person. Kuroki's final narration, taken from his journal, writes that he expects this to happen and asks Keiko not to grieve over what he has to do to his friends, as an intertitle remarks that "nobody ever wins" in war.

The English title is taken from the John Dryden poem, Alexander's Feast, stanza 1: "None but the brave/deserves the fair."

This was the sixth of nine films produced by Frank Sinatra, and the only film he directed.^[9][10] The executive producers carried extra fame in their own right: William H. Daniels was former president of the American Society of Cinematographers, while Howard W. Koch was former president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

This section needs expansion with: This describes two reviews. Surely there must be more?. You can help by adding to it. (May 2025)

Upon release, The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther gave the production a largely negative review, writing, "A minimum show of creative invention and a maximum use of cinema clichés are evident in the staging of this war film," and "Mr. Sinatra, as producer and director, as well as actor of the secondary role of the booze-guzzling medical corpsman, displays distinction only in the latter job. Being his own director, he has no trouble stealing scenes, especially the one in which he burbles boozy wisecracks while preparing to saw off the shivering Japanese's leg. Mr. Sinatra is crashingly casual when it comes to keeping the Japanese in their place." Crowther also noted "Clint Walker ... Tommy Sands ... Brad Dexter ... and Tony Bill ... make over-acting—phony acting—the trademark of the film. What with incredible color and the incredible screenplay of Katsuya Susaki and John Twist, this adds up to quite a fake concoction."^[13]

Current critic Robert Horton (of Washington's The Herald) calls None but the Brave "a 1965 anti-war picture that turns out to be much more interesting and compelling than its reputation would suggest," that "predates the rash of anti-war counterculture movies by a few years," also noting that it "bears the influence of Bridge on the River Kwai with a little Mister Roberts thrown in, but it has a bitterness about war that goes all the way through to the forceful final title, a reflection of Sinatra's liberal views at the time.” Horton points out that Clint Eastwood received a lot of credit for making two films that showed World War II from the American and the Japanese sides (Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima), but that "in a way, Sinatra had already done it, and in one movie."^[14]

• Dell Movie Classic: None but the Brave (April–June 1965)^[15][16]

• Hell in the Pacific (1968)
• Enemy Mine (1985)
• Into the White (2012)