BIG JIM McLAIN: Big John kicks some commie butt!

John Wayne was never shy about wearing his heart on his sleeve. He was never going to be mistaken for one of those liberal lefty Hollywood types who dared to question the motives and morals of the American Way. But rarely did he display his politics quite as nakedly as in 1952's BIG JIM McLAIN. Here he doesn't just wear his heart on his sleeve - his heart is the sleeve and most of the rest of the shirt as well!

Big Jim (Wayne) is an investigator for HUAC - the House UnAmerican Activtities Committee. HUAC had come into it's own in the second half of the 1940s as the US Congress' primary tool in rooting out American born communist subversives who were working on behalf of Moscow to bring about the downfall of capitalism. Often confused with Senator Joe McCarthy's anti-communist witch-hunt of the early 1950s, HUAC actually got there before him, and the committee's probing of communists in Hollywood in the latter 40s started rolling the bandwagon which McCarthy jumped aboard in 1950 and then hijacked to whip-up anti-communist hysteria in the USA with wild claims of Reds under almost every bed.
There's no room for baseless accusations or irrational hysteria in Big Jim's world. He and fellow investigator Mal Baxter (James Arness) remain scrupulously law-abiding and polite, even as the stinkin' pinko university professors they know beyond a doubt are redder than a red rose walk free after invoking their fifth amendment right against self incrimination while testifying before the heroic HUAC committee members (woodenly playing themselves). 
But things start turning ever so slightly dirty when Jim and Mal are sent to Hawaii to investigate a commie spy ring. Big Jim's forced to take time out from romancing a doctor's receptionist (Nancy Olson) to punch one of the conspirators on the nose after he insults a lady of dubious morals, who is nonetheless worthy of protection because she's red white and blue through and through.
The whole film is an unashamedly simplistic exercise in flagwaving which bears only the slightest relationship to the reality of HUAC's work. But it's also a fascinating artifact of a time not so long ago when the nation which prides itself on being the personification of freedom and democracy allowed itself to be plunged into a nightmare of fear, betrayal and ruined careers by the increasingly ludicrous claims of McCarthy and his HUAC associates.  BIG JIM McLAIN plays now as a far-fetched yarn but back in 1952 Wayne and Warner Bros were deadly serious about alerting Americans to the threat posed by the supposed traitors in their midst.
Even without the right wing politics BIG JIM McLAIN is far from Wayne's finest cinematic moment. There's really not enough storyline to fill the 90 minute running time so it's padded out with a couple of excruciatingly unfunny and pointless comic scenes, some excruciatingly bad acting by the real life Police Chief of Honolulu, and same painfully sappy mugging by Wayne attempting to portray bashfulness in his courtship of Nancy. 
Genuine modesty was never his strong point.