Wake Island

While nowadays this may seem quite indistinguishable from the many flagwavers rushed into production in its day, at the time WAKE ISLAND was very well received garnering 4 major Academy Award nominations (Best Film, Best Direction, Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor - William Bendix); true, the characters and situations are pretty stereotypical but even so, it is certainly well enough made and well-cast (Brian Donlevy, Macdonald Carey, Albert Dekker, Robert Preston, Walter Abel) to be remembered when WWII films are discussed. Once the Pearl Harbor attack gets underway, it becomes an engrossing and poignant depiction of men-in-war facing insurmountable odds; the downbeat ending was quite fresh at the time and seems to have led to a spate of similarly pessimistic WWII movies like BATAAN (1943), SAHARA (1943), THEY WERE EXPENDABLE (1945), etc.