Whitmore Tobacco Chewing

Nothing is a "guaranteed" death sentence, but smoking or chewing are unhealthy habits, regardless of whether you develop cancer from them. Smoking harms your breathing, senses of taste and smell, causes dental problems, leads to greater susceptibility to emphysema, coughing, colds and other respiratory issues, and so forth. I don't know where you got your 1% figure in so far as getting cancer from chewing tobacco goes; I don't have any statistics so cannot comment on its accuracy, but it sounds low to me. Regardless, it unarguably can cause cancer of the mouth and throat and result in having to have one's jaw or teeth or gums or tongue or other areas of the mouth, neck and throat removed surgically, which in most ways is an even more horrible fate than lung cancer. Unless, of course, it kills you outright first.

Whatever the actual odds of getting cancer from chewing, I doubt any of the hundreds of thousands who have suffered from the habit would be cheered by the claim that they only had a 1% chance of contracting cancer. Your attempt to somehow minimize the risks and dangers of tobacco, and ignore its other potential health issues, sounds like something I'd have read in the 1960s, not the 2010s. Tobacco's health dangers are numerous, well-established and high -- whether it's smoked or chewed.

In Kinnie's case, his ludicrous overuse of chew looks like someone begging for mouth cancer. I don't know how realistic that degree of usage is -- it looks exaggerated and ridiculous to me -- but even if one accepts your 1% figure, Kinnie looks a good candidate for that dubious honor.

James Whitmore did do an outstanding job in this, his second film, which is why he received an Oscar nomination for his work. He didn't need the unnecessary over-the-top chewing to turn in a great performance. I disagree about Van Johnson, whom normally I like: I think he was kind of obnoxious and overbearing here, though much of that was the character. His incessant high-pitched cries of things like "Oh, noooo!", in that somewhat gurgly-gravelly voice, really put me off quickly.

I see no problem with criticizing a film about any of its details, large or small. Why do you think a "bad" film can be criticized on such grounds but not a "good" one? That makes no sense. In my view (and I guess some others'), Battleground would have been better without certain faults, such as Kinnie's idiotic over-chewing, which is pointless and stupid. Some amount of it, okay, but not so much that he couldn't go five minutes without a chaw in his mouth. You may disagree with that opinion, and that's fine. But this condescending "I feel sorry for people" stuff is unnecessary and silly. I could equally feel sorry for someone who can't abide legitimate gripes about even a basically good film. But I don't, because you're entitled to be uncritical about things if you choose to be. Those of us who wish to post a critical opinion on some aspect have every right to do so without being talked down to or scolded as though attacking a fault were somehow contemptible.