They Were Expendable

They Were Expendable (1945) is an American war drama you can watch online on iFILM. Directed by John Ford immediately after the end of World War II, it's drawn from real events: the story of PT boat squadrons fighting in Philippine waters after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Lieutenants Brickley (Robert Montgomery) and Ryan (John Wayne) command a small torpedo boat unit that Navy brass dismiss as unfit for serious combat. Then the war starts in earnest and the little fast boats prove their worth — shooting down aircraft, running supplies between islands, picking off enemy ships. But Ford isn't telling a victory story. He's telling a retreat: men doing their jobs under relentless pressure, with no reinforcements coming and no guarantee they get out.

Ford himself served as a combat documentarian during the war, and that experience is visible in every scene — in the exhaustion on Montgomery's face, in the way Wayne plays a real tired officer rather than a legend. It's one of the most unsentimental American war films of its era. Watch They Were Expendable (1945) online on iFILM.