Cinema: Pacifist Paradox

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The Hook is an ironical melodrama with an irenical moral: Love is the ultimate weapon and the absolute deterrent.

This pacifist paradox is illustrated in an incident of the Korean war. Three U.S. soldiers, a sergeant and two privates, rescue a North Korean airman (Enrique Magalona) downed in an inlet. When they radio headquarters, they receive a command worded with discretion but ice-clear in intention; shoot the prisoner. The sergeant (Kirk Douglas) brusquely orders the privates to do it. The first (Robert Walker) refuses. The second (Nick Adams) raises his pistol—but cannot pull the trigger. The sergeant explodes. A private replies: "Why not shoot him yourself, sir? And look him right in the eye." The sergeant, a small-bore sadist, raises his pistol—but he too cannot pull the trigger.

The scene is scarcely credible, but in other episodes the character of the sadistic sergeant fits Douglas like epidermis—the actor has a jaw like a barracuda and a grin full of rusty fishhooks and what have you. Walker, 21-year-old son of Jennifer Jones and the late Robert Walker, is the ideal idealistic dogface—and he has the looks and the charm of his famous father. What's wrong with the picture is its script. Scenarist Henry Denker says some things that cannot be said too often: a life once lost can never be replaced; anyone who kills, kills part of himself; men are born with original virtue as well as original sin; peace is a moral as well as a political achievement. But sometimes he is carried away in his chiliastic exaltations. He really seems to believe, for instance, that people who get to know each other inevitably get to love each other. Silly boy.