Army Champions (1941)

I am usually a fan of these Pete Smith films, but this one is really quite dull. His normally tongue-in-cheek commentary is replaced with something altogether more contrived as we see an array of guns at the disposal of American soldiers that get steadily bigger and more accurate as this repetitive ten minutes rumbles on. There are the usual “best in the world” superlatives, of course, and it all looks like a dawdle when nobody is shooting back so I suppose it might just work as a morale-booster for a domestic audience getting used to FDRs new armaments policy, but as a film it’s archive you might have seen before coupled with an off-form commentary.