As a biopic, this is pretty thin; it only covers a short, late period of a long and turbulent life. We first meet the general in 1942, with no real context about his life between 1880 and 1940. This is likely reasonable, as MacArthur was a massive celebrity, and the general knowledge fund of viewers at the time probably included an outline of his life.
I also excuse this thinness somewhat because making a film about MacArthur's entire life and career would be damn near impossible. You'd definitely have to have more than one actor and more time than a feature film allows. A lot of who he was and what he did is logistically complicated, plus being philosophically complicated for modern audiences due to how warfare has changed since Vietnam. You'd need someone exceptionally thoughtful about war and military life to write it, and someone skilled in both human drama and complex action scenes to shoot it.
The MacArthur screenplay seems to have been written by a speechwriter rather than someone who understands how humans talk. Scenes kind of just start and stop, with no beginning/middle/end or structural integrity. The acting is fine, and the haircuts are quite close to the 1940s, which must have been a hardship for the actors. I wrote on Twitter that Gregory Peck is too dignified for his profession. Whatever movie he's acting in is much better than this one, and his performance shows the profound weakness of the writing. The direction is better than average, but cinematography doesn't have much to work with. Pyrotechnics are pretty great. Music (by Jerry Goldsmith) makes all kinds of promises it doesn't keep. Lopsided as hell in terms of pacing.
Not good but not terrible; essentially, didn't need to be made, not this year.
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