Category: War

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (GERMANY, 2022)

By Marc S. Sanders

Edward Berger’s Oscar nominated interpretation of All Quiet On The Western Front is a massive success in filmmaking, storytelling, character and construction.  This 2022 adaptation of the well-known novel by Erich Maria Remarque does not only depict the ugly horrors of a mud soaked, gory and bloody conflict within deep dug out trenches, and on endless plains of wasteland battlegrounds.  It also provides perspective for the difficult peace talks occurring near the tail end of the third year (1917) of the First World War.  Another aspect covers the celebrated commander who leads a charge from the comfort of a German high castle while feasting on grand meals, far away from the front, steadfast to never surrender, and emerge victorious no matter the cost.

The main character is a youth named Paul (Felix Kammerer) who is eager to join the German brigade against the French armies.  He happily takes up with school chums to forge their parents’ signatures and enlist amid the reverie that greets them with cheer from his school superiors raging with heroic propaganda.  Shortly after, he is gifted an honorary soldier’s uniform, pressed, and laundered, that once belonged to another soldier who violently perished in battle.  Paul and his friends are rushed to front line of the fighting, into a muddy German trench and pushed on to slaughter in the name of his country. It does not take long for Paul to realize any derring-do he envisioned is nonexistent as men die by gunfire, grenades, flame thrower attacks and tank armaments.  If the men around him aren’t dead, they are at least dismembered with shredded, bloody stumps in place of limbs.

Elsewhere, the German diplomats travel in class aboard a luxury passenger train to meet up with French leaders in an effort to come to a cease fire.  Germany is greatly failing this conflict with loss of life, territory, supplies and money.  It’s a reluctant meeting to partake as the French are uncompromising with their terms.  Either Germany agrees to the demands of the French, or the war continues.  The Germans only has 72 hours to concur.  Coinciding with all of this is General Friedrichs of Germany (Devid Striesow) who lays out commands while dining and taking his butler service for granted.  He also sheds no tears for the soldiers beneath him as they are giving up their lives to fight a war that can’t be won.  Assuming a complete understanding of what constitutes a soldier based upon the generations who fought before him, he asks “What is a soldier without war?”; a dangerous philosophy for all others but him.

Of the modern war pictures to arrive in the late twentieth century and on (The Thin Red Line, Born On The Fourth Of July, Letters From Iwo Jima, 1917), the battle footage consistently offered a convincing and horrifying reality of the bloodshed that occurred during these historical conflicts.  These are not the John Wayne pictures of yesteryear.  Watching Berger’s film, which he co-wrote, I didn’t necessarily see anything that I hadn’t seen before, like sudden gun shots to the head, rapid gunfire, caked on mud, faces being blown off, or bodies being blasted to bits. Tanks are destroyed with grenades tossed into the cockpits and within their tracks. At times Paul even loses his sensory hearing amid the deafening battles, just as Tom Hanks’ character did in Saving Private Ryan.  Much of the material is identical to these other esteemed films.  What grabbed me though was how three storylines in this new film compound on each other.

Peace talks arrive. However, any kind of reconciliation will not begin until the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.  That’s quite convenient for country leaders to agree on while sitting around a dining table within a luxury train compartment, but the bloodshed continues until that scheduled moment arrives.  Talk of peace also does not force battalion leaders to stand down.  If Germany is to lose the conflict to France, they will go down with one final victorious conquest in battle.  War does not play like a sporting contest where the officials ensure that everyone stops what they are doing as a clock runs out.  War unleashes a rampage in the pawns used to obtain territory and conquest. The fighting gets personal.  One on one fights resort to drowning your enemy in a brutal mud puddle or clubbing an attacker with a rock to the head.  A very personal scene occurs when Paul resorts to stabbing a French soldier multiple times in the heart.  The poor man is giving his last breaths and Paul needs to shut him up to avoid drawing any attention to their location, so he starts to shove mounds of dirt in the man’s mouth.  Soon after, Paul is apologizing to this man and begging his victim to hold on for dear life.  It’s a powerful scene never intended to make any sense, because ultimately in the field of battle, nothing makes sense.  Only frenetic chaos exists.

I have every appreciation for men and women who serve their country with the courageous will to protect against enemy threats and uphold domestic freedom and democracy.  Yet, endless war for achievement of gain does not necessarily translate to protection or honor like General Friedrichs preaches to his battalions from his balcony.  It’s easy for him to heed this policy, dressed in an unstained, decorated uniform with the pride of his fighting generations before him who were all hailed as heroes.  For an insignificant solider like Paul, though, when does he earn the recognition he has sacrificed?  When will his dead comrades gain any appreciation?  Paul’s greatest accomplishment is that he does not get shot and blown away as he runs head on towards a more powerful enemy.  Is that a celebration of the Germany he thought he stood for, though?  Paul encounters an awakening he never expected while fighting at the front line. 

Edward Berger controls a very detailed and forceful piece.  Every ditch or shredded body of a solider tells the real story of this bloody war that cost nearly 17 million lives.  The art direction of the trenches for both the German side and the French, located at the front lines, are endless mazes dug deeper than the heights of the even the tallest soldiers.  Vokel Bertelmann provides the blaring, monstrously echoing soundtrack to the film and uses his horn like chords as an omnipotence to this hellish environment.  His orchestra is so pertinent to the setting of the film.  The craft of makeup and costumes for all the extras and main players in the battle scenes is grotesque with extra thick caked on mud and different shades of blood reds, browns, and blacks.  The sounds of the tanks and the rattling explosions will make you wince with fear and shock for these boys running to their ill-fated doom with just a thin rifle to fight with. 

All Quiet On The Western Front has all of the common tropes of other more modern war pictures.  It works on its own though because the battle scenes are spliced in with the puppet masters, comfortably located elsewhere, who can control the outcomes of these bloody conflicts.  The delay of peace and agreement prolongs the horrifying carnage.  The fate of Paul, his friends, and all the other soldiers rests on what does or does not come to settlement from the people whose commands they serve.

This is a fantastic movie.  One of the best films of 2022.

APOCALYPSE NOW

By Marc S. Sanders

Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War masterpiece, Apocalypse Now from 1979, focuses on a madman assigned to find another madman and assassinate him.  I look at the film as a spiral into a dark, demented psychosis.  Each section of Coppola’s film appears like some variation of insanity within an environment and period of time where there was no end in sight for a war that was going out of control.

Captain Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen) is first shown in a hotel room that he has ransacked during a drunken rage, going so far as to smash his fist into a mirror.  His voiceover explains the horrifying experiences he has already endured.  Now he is at a point where killing is all he is capable of performing. He is summoned to a General’s lunch where he is assigned to seek out a highly decorated Special Forces soldier named Colonel Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando).  Kurtz has taken his squad over to Cambodia without authorization.  It is believed that he has gone insane with his will to harbor people over there into a cult that he controls while engaging in his own actions against the Vietcong.  The army needs this problem contained and Willard has been selected to terminate Kurtz.

Apocalypse Now is primarily about the journey, rather than its destination.  Willard is to be escorted by patrol boat up the Nang River to find Kurtz and complete his mission.  Along the way he will encounter a variety of scenarios and characters. 

The standout character is Lt Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall) the commander of a helicopter calvary battalion.  Willard meets up with Kilgore early on as he will provide an opening on the river for the long journey to begin.  This is the most memorable section of Coppola’s film.  Robert Duvall is truly maddening as he relishes in the destruction he commands.  Kilgore is amused to blare Wagner’s The Ride Of The Valkyries as his choppers blast the shore line where Vietnamese villagers and farmers reside.  Duvall almost seems god like during this sequence because he does not even flinch as explosions and armory are set off mere inches away from him.  He’s crazed enough to even send his troops out into the ocean to surf while the mayhem is still occurring.  When he takes off his shirt while proudly wearing his calvary hat, sunglasses and yellow scarf around his neck, he utters the famous line “I love the smell of Napalm in the morning.”  There is no hint of sarcasm in that line.  Kilgore truly means it.  The commands of war are his absolute pleasure.  The only human feeling that Kilgore shows is when his personalized surfboard turns up missing.  Otherwise, the carnage he leaves behind is a job well done.

Why do I focus on this sequence so much?  First, it is a perfect construction of filmmaking and acting combined.  Coppola’s clear daylight shots of the choppers advancing on the surf are an amazing sight to behold.  To have that much control of so many vehicles in the air so that a select number of cameras can take in the sequence amazes me.  It is feats like these that show why I love movies so much.  The moment is more enhanced with Wagner’s piece accompanying it.  This could all be appreciated as simple documentary style filmmaking.  However, when you combine the mayhem Coppola stages with the proud march of The Ride Of The Valkyries, and Duvall’s crazed glee of commanding this episode of mass destruction, you start to see a pretense.  The hypocrisy of all the elements contained in this sequence tells the story. This country and its people are being obliterated by a crazed individual arriving from the heavens above.  As the scene progresses, my mind returned to the overall plot of the film; the mission of the protagonist which is to kill a lunatic.  At this point in the picture, I have yet to meet Colonel Kurtz.  So, how much of a madman must Kurtz be when compared to a maniac like Kilgore?

Later sequences carry on the insanity theme.  A trio of Playboy playmates are brought in to entertain the troops during one of Willard’s stop overs.  Yet, the crowd of soldiers gets out of control and the entertainers are forced to flee by helicopter with some of the men grasping on to the chopper as it takes flight.  My thoughts were you must be insane to continue hanging on while it gets higher into the air.  Let go for heaven’s sake before you plummet to your death.  Nevertheless, these half naked women are the purest, most angelic thing that these boys have ever seen since being recruited into this hellish nightmare. 

Willard’s crewmen on the patrol boat seem too green with the impacts of war.  They are not as battle weary as Willard.  There’s a guy named Lance (Sam Bottoms) who seems happy go lucky to play the Rolling Stones.  There’s a chef by trade (Frederic Forrest) and a young kid who goes by the name of “Clean” (Laurence Fishburne).  Chief Phillips (Albert Hall) drives the boat.  Willard must keep his mission classified.  These men are only supposed to get him to his destination no matter how far up the river it takes them.  These soldiers are riding into the unknown, escorting a crazed fellow who knows that a positive outcome is not likely.  Coppola provides moments where the men lose control of their senses.  These boys don’t come as informed about what is right and wrong within the parameters of war.  Innocent lives are taken as the patrol boat continues its horrifying tour.  Their lives might be taken as well.  The question is what is the worse cost?  Death, or the horrors they encounter, act upon, and live with thereafter?

It’s notable to watch Frederic Forrest’s performance as he transitions into a mindset with no other option but to slaughter as he dons camouflage makeup later in the film.  Albert Hall’s performance lends some sensibility to the picture.  However, how does Chief Phillips’ receptivity measure up to the crazed obsession that Willard has for completing his assignment?  It’s all quite tragic as the film moves from one moment to the next.

As expected, the third act of the film focuses on Willard’s encounter with Kurtz.  Before all of this, we follow along as Willard reads through the extensive files of Kurtz’ history and career.  This man seems like a giant among giants and in 1979 it seems only befitting that a giant of an actor portrays the mysterious Colonel.  So, that actor had to be none other than Marlon Brando.  Oddly enough, this portion of the film is where the film starts to wear out for me.  Kurtz is insane in a quiet and dark way.  Coppola shoots much of Brando’s performance in darkness.  I’m aware of the purpose with that kind of filmmaking, but it is a long section of film to watch an actor move in and out of the light.  Brando comes off mysterious with lines of dialogue that make little sense at times.  Some allegories work as he describes Willard’s purpose as that of a clerk delivering groceries.  Yet, Kurtz seems the least crazed of all the crazies provided within Coppola’s film. 

A babbling, hippie photographic journalist (Dennis Hopper) greets Willard upon his arrival.  He’s talking in circles with envy for Kurtz, his leader, who resides within the tomb like structure along the banks of the river.  The natives also seem to heed towards Kurtz’ influence.  Willard is taken captive and tormented.  Still, when Kurtz speaks he doesn’t come off so kamikaze like the others we’ve seen before.  I can only presume there are levels to insanity.  Madness is not a well-defined ailment.  I find it ironic that Kurtz, the great soldier and decorated war hero, is deemed the greatest threat to the armed forces’ image within this conflict.  Kilgore, on the other hand, has free reign to slaughter helpless women, children, and farming communities all in the name of victory while commanding his underlings to surf along the coastline. 

What is so mystifying about Apocalypse Now is how thematic the movie seems to be.  It follows this common pattern demonstrating how crazed the effects of war can have on people.  The killing and bloodshed are the most apparent of course.  However, the military declares early on that there is a loose cannon within their ranks that must be contained.  The only option is to kill this man, who has done his bidding for the progress of its army for so long.  This man, Colonel Kurtz, has sacrificed promotions in ranking and a return to a quiet life with his wife and children, so that he can continue with carrying out the agendas administered by his government.  Yet somehow, he crosses a border, and he no longer kills the way his superiors want him to, and now he must be terminated.  The hypocrisy is to send a madman to do a madman’s bidding, as if that will preserve some sort of sanity within this out-of-control conflict.

I could not get away from that impression during the whole three-hour running time of the film.  Practically every caption, scene, expression, or scenario is rooted in madness.  Francis Ford Coppola wrote the script with John Milius and it’s been said that much of the filmmaking was done on the fly.  Still, with Coppola’s direction along with a strong cast, particularly from the quietly, reserved Martin Sheen, the message comes through clearly.  War begins with a difference in politics and a need for further control.  Pawns are the collateral damage used at will to settle the argument.  Rules of engagement may appear formally on paper.  However, is anyone with a gun in his hand or facing the end of a loaded barrel going to pause and consider what’s just and appropriate before taking action? 

Apocalypse Now speaks to an end of days where the soldiers sent to do the bidding of others respond by doing what they ask of themselves.  Therefore, I’ll end this piece on a vague note. 

There is no organized effort when it comes to war.

NOTE: This article is based on my viewing of Coppola’s third iteration of his film, entitled Apocalypse Now: The Final Cut.

A BRIDGE TOO FAR (1977)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Richard Attenborough
CAST: Sean Connery, Ryan O’Neal, Gene Hackman, Michael Caine, Anthony Hopkins, James Caan, Maximilian Schell, Elliott Gould, Denholm Elliott, Laurence Olivier, Robert Redford, and MANY others
MY RATING: 7/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 63% Fresh
Everyone’s a Critic Category: “A Movie Set During an Historic War”

PLOT: A detailed account of an overly ambitious Allied forces operation intended to end the war by Christmas of 1944.


In September of 1944, in an attempt to land a finishing blow to Germany following D-Day, Allied forces launched Operation Market Garden, a bold offensive that would drop over 30,000 soldiers behind enemy lines.  The objective was to capture and hold three strategic bridges in the Netherlands, over which a massive column of British tanks would then roll straight into the Ruhr, the heart of Germany’s industrial complex.  Neutralize the Ruhr, and taking Berlin would be inevitable.  However, as with so many other simple plans in history, multiple factors led to the operation getting bogged down at the third bridge, and after massive Allied casualties, the offensive was abandoned.

Based on a bestselling novel by Cornelius Ryan (who also wrote the novel The Longest Day), the movie of A Bridge Too Far resembles the actual Operation Market Garden, not just in appearances, but also in its ambition, scope, and ultimate failure to achieve its goal.  However, as a pure combat movie, I give it credit where it’s due.

First off, look at this cast.  There had not been an assemblage of so many of Hollywood’s leading men since 1962’s The Longest Day (“42 International Stars”, that movie’s posters proclaimed).  Naturally, most of the actors are pitch perfect in their roles, with one glaring exception.  Whoever thought Gene Hackman was just the right guy to play a Polish general was either desperate or foolhardy, or both.  Hackman is a talented actor, without question, but his attempt at a Polish accent is a MAJOR distraction from whatever he’s saying.  Every once in a while, it even pulls a disappearing act, not that it matters.

ANYHOO.  The all-star cast.  To offset the lengthy running time, the story is told in semi-episodic fashion, which makes me wonder if someone hasn’t thought about rebooting this movie as a Netflix/HBO/streaming miniseries.  I’d watch it.  Within each of these episodes, it helps if we remember right away that Michael Caine is the leader of the tank column, Sean Connery is heading up one of the ground units, Anthony Hopkins is holding the bridge at Arnhem, and Elliot Gould is the cigar-chewing American trying to get a temporary bridge put together, and so on.  It’s a rather brilliant way of using visual shorthand to keep the audience oriented during its nearly three-hour running time (including an intermission at some screenings).

There is one “episode” featuring James Caan that has literally – LITERALLY – nothing to do with the plot.  He plays an Army grunt who has promised his young captain not to let him die.  After a grueling ground battle, Caan finds his captain’s lifeless body and, after improbably running a German blockade, holds an Army medic at gunpoint, forcing him to examine his dead captain for signs of life.  I read that, unlikely thought it may seem, this incident really did happen as presented in the film (more or less).  All well and good.  But what does it have to do with capturing bridges?  I’m sure the story is in the novel, but the movie takes a good 10-to-15-minute detour from the plot to follow this bizarre story.  Did director Richard Attenborough think we needed comic relief or something?  I remember liking that story as a kid, but watching it now…is it necessary?  Discuss amongst yourselves, I’ll expect a summary of your answer at tomorrow’s class.

I want to mention the combat scenes in A Bridge Too Far.  First off, I never served in the armed forces.  Well, never in combat.  I was in the Air Force for about a week.  (Well, Air Force boot camp in Oklahoma for about a week…LONG story.)  So, my observations of the combat scenes are less about historical accuracy and more about how they compare to other films.  While some of the combat portrayed is rightfully horrific in its own way – the river crossing in those ridiculous canvas boats, the slaughter of the paratroopers, the seemingly endless holdout at Arnhem – a lot of the combat, particularly the tank shelling and the skirmishes at Arnhem, is…I have to say, it’s kind of fun to watch.  There’s something, I don’t know, charming about it all.  It reminded me of how I used to play with my army men and Star Wars figures, or how I used to run around with neighborhood friends wearing plastic helmets and pretending we were “good-guys-and-bad-guys” while throwing dirt clods at each other and making fake explosion noises.  It was movies like A Bridge Too Far that shaped my young impressions of what wartime combat was like, and whether it was realistic or not was irrelevant.

Anyway, enough nostalgia.  Here’s the sad truth: A Bridge Too Far, despite its thrilling combat and all-star cast, falls short of delivering a truly meaningful war film.  There are half-hearted attempts to drum up some dramatic impact with scenes in a makeshift field hospital and a speech in Dutch from Liv Ullman wearing her best “isn’t-war-awful” expression, but for some reason those scenes fall flat.  (I did like the “war-is-futile” scene with that one soldier who runs out to retrieve the air-dropped canister, only to discover…well, I won’t spoil it, but it’s a good scene.)

After writing almost 1,000 words, I’m no closer to explaining why A Bridge Too Far falls short.  It’s still an entertaining watch, but I’ve really got to be in the mood for it.  It’s rather like reading a historical novel that isn’t particularly thrilling like a Crichton or a Clancy, but it does deliver some eyebrow-raising information.  It doesn’t hit me in the heart, but it does feed my brain.  Maybe that’s not such a bad thing in the long run, but if movies are about stirring emotions, I must say: A Bridge Too Far is no Saving Private Ryan.

(Sure, I probably could have just said that instead of writing this long-ass review, but where’s the fun in that?)


QUESTIONS FROM EVERYONE’S A CRITIC

Best line or memorable quote:
“Remember what the general said: we’re the cavalry. It would be bad form to arrive in advance of schedule. In the nick of time would do nicely.”

Would you recommend this film?  Why or why not?
Ultimately, I would recommend it to film buffs who have not yet seen it.  If nothing else, it’s an interesting time capsule movie.  This would be the last time for a VERY long time that anyone would attempt to make an epic film with a truly all-star cast.  …come to think of it, I can’t think of a major, epic drama since A Bridge Too Far with an actual A-list cast.  Can you?

ALIENS: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT

By Marc S. Sanders

James Cameron’s Aliens is deliberately morose in its storytelling and cinematic look.  It’s ugly and nightmarish.  It’s nerve-wracking at times.  It’s dark and somber too.  It’s also one of the best action films ever made.  For me, this is Cameron’s best film and it’s not only because I’m a sci-fi blockbuster nerd of sorts. 

Serving as a sequel to Ridley Scott’s monster movie, Alien from 1979, Aliens works on its own independence while still adhering to the storyline qualities of the original.  Sigourney Weaver returns as Ripley.  The story begins 57 years later where Ripley’s lifeboat ship from the end of the first film is found in deep space.  She reports back to the conglomerate company of the terrifying happenings she experienced with her crew mates who didn’t survive when an unrecognizable creature terrorized them aboard their vessel.  The company is less than apt to believe her account though. 

One of the company men, Burke (Paul Reiser), requests that Ripley accompany him and a squad of tough Marines on a mission to the planet, LV-426, where her crew discovered an immense crop of eggs and took back an alien aboard their ship.  In Ripley’s absence, a colony of over a hundred families was set up on the planet to establish habitable real estate.  However, the colony has lost contact, and the company is sending in the military to assess the situation to see what’s going on. Ripley is supposed to only serve as an advisor.

James Cameron’s script and direction takes its time to build up suspense and explore what’s unknown to these soldiers.  Upon arrival on the planet, much of what they find is left in wreckage and no one is to be found anywhere.  At best, Ripley can only see what was likely the remains of alien attacks with acid burns within the steel structures.  Yet to Ripley and viewers familiar with the first film, it is still a mystery as to what truly occurred.  Naturally, more will eventually be uncovered and then this arriving crew will have their hands full.

James Cameron has an imagination that bursts with colorful and amazing ideas.  The Terminator films were astonishing in its own apocalyptic future that haunts a present time period.  Titanic was a film mired in much expense and technical setbacks. Though, no one ever expected just how accomplished the award-winning blockbuster turned out to be.  Avatar is wonderous on a planetary level.  However, James Cameron is not necessarily a celebrated script writer.  Often his dialogue is very cheesy and unnatural.  Aliens is the exception though.

The script acknowledges that these gung-ho marines are “grunts.”  Thankfully, they talk like grunts.  I know that many fans adore Bill Paxton as the cut-up member of the troupe known as Hudson, who has brilliant one liners.  It’s actually a well fleshed out character.  Before Hudson knows what he’s up against, this new mission is just a lame “bug hunt” and he happily screams out as their spacecraft makes the quick drop into the planet’s atmosphere.  When he eventually comes to face to face with the monsters, terrifying, cry baby like fear overtakes him.  He’s giving his one liners like “Game over, Man,” and “We’re  fucked!”  Yet, the dread and anxiety are completely relatable.  There’s something out there waiting to tear me apart and eat me, and there’s hardly anyone left to help and rescue me.  I’m in the middle of nowhere.  Cameron wrote a good under the radar kind of character, and we feel for this guy’s dilemma as if it’s our own.  Paxton’s performance made it better and awarded it with adrenalized highs…and these aliens, with teeth and tails and acid for blood, are most definitely scary as hell.

I no longer watch the original theatrical cut of Aliens.  I turn to the Director’s Cut that Cameron always envisioned.  Particularly, it triumphs because the Ripley character is much more fleshed out with necessary dimension for the film.  Early on, a cut scene, now restored, tells us that Ripley’s daughter died from cancer while she was lost in deep space.  The daughter lived to the age of 66, even though Ripley didn’t age a bit.  Awakening from her cryo sleep, only introduces heartache for Ripley.  What I like about this information is that it serves a relationship later found in Aliens.  A little girl named Newt (Carrie Henn) is found by the marines and appears to be the sole survivor of the alien attacks.  Ripley steps in as a surrogate mother towards Newt as all of the characters work tirelessly to survive and somehow get off the planet.  The Director’s Cut gives some value to Ripley and purpose beyond just violently slaughtering aliens as a means of revenge or fulfillment.  It allows Aliens to work on an effective emotional level and Sigourney Weaver earned her Oscar nomination because of it.

Cameron introduces traitors as well into the story, which are likely not so surprising but make the film all the more challenging for the heroes of the picture.  Michael Biehn is the sex symbol, a cool and quiet tough guy.  Jenette Goldstein is a Hispanic marine who gives off good imagery as one of the few female squad members who enters the areas first with the largest gun in the troupe.  Lance Henrikson is memorable as an android that Ripley is apprehensive to trust – perhaps he’s the “Mr. Spock” of this sci-fi entry.

Technically speaking, Aliens is so unbelievably atmospheric in its bleak, futuristic setting.  Barring a few moments where the spaceships clearly look like miniatures, the interiors look organically formed.  I can’t compliment the set pieces enough in that respect.  When the Marines enter a large cavern, it is enormously shell like that it looks like an animal’s nest.  Cameron hides his various monsters perfectly.  So that when they slowly unravel their tales and skeletal forms, it looks as if the darkness within the frames begin to move.  The stillness of what surrounds our main characters awaken with life that maybe we don’t want to see. 

Aliens works independent of Ridley Scott’s prior picture because it’s a war movie; one that is set on an outer space planet.  We witness how the surviving squad troops strategize with what little they have left.  Thereafter, we see how they face enemies who may have the upper hand in battles to come.  I love how Cameron builds suspense with a sensor device the troops use.  It begins to ring as a life form closes in on their proximity.  The monitor fills with glowing blurs as more life forms nearby build up.  A nervous and great moment occurs when they can not understand how the aliens could be so close and yet none of them can see what is so nearby.  The surprise is unexpected and worthy of a scream. 

Cameron’s script doesn’t give his heroes a break.  Aliens thrives on the characters simply playing keep away, while one member of the party is working against what little they have left.  I like that.  While Aliens may be intentionally dreary the fact that there’s no easy out for these folks is what keeps the pulse of the film racing with nonstop suspense and action.

Aliens is an absolutely solid picture promising a future for this franchise. Sadly, it really never excelled above what was accomplished in these first two films from Ridley Scott, and now James Cameron.  Years later, Scott returned to the franchise with some interesting prequel films that colored in some of the elements that were only talked about before, like the company that puts all these people within the peril of the aliens.  Yet to date, that all still remains unfinished.  James Cameron just set the bar so high with his movie that the few that followed never amounted to what he created.

You may not feel all warm and fuzzy after watching Aliens, but at least you’ll feel incredibly excited with its construction from a director in the early years of his profession.  James Cameron brought about a solid script and unbelievable effects that say so much on a visual level.  If Aliens makes you nervous, fearful and especially terrified, then James Cameron has done his job.

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN

By Marc S. Sanders

How much blood needs to be spilled to change the color of an ocean red?  The battle of Normandy during World War II showed quite a bit, and Steven Spielberg more than convincingly duplicates that terrible episode in world history with his war picture Saving Private Ryan. 

Spielberg earned his second Oscar for direction with this film from 1998.  It’s not only a technical marvel, but it’s a story that tests the nature of humanity when a squad of American soldiers ask themselves if saving the life of one man is worth sacrificing themselves.  Tom Hanks leads the team of recruits.

Saving Private Ryan begins on June 6, 1944 when thousands of American soldiers were inevitable sitting ducks as they washed ashore on Normandy Beach to engage in battle with German forces.  Spielberg’s footage is astonishing.  First of note is the cinematography is wisely washed out of color.  The sky is grey.  The ocean water and sand feel frigidly cold.  The most dominant color is blood red.  The fear displayed on the thousands of extras portraying soldiers, who never look mentally ready for battle, is palpable. 

The shots in this roughly thirty-minute opening do not compromise.  A soldier is seen walking around looking for his arm that has been shredded from below his elbow.  Other soldiers will turn over one way out of camera, but when they roll back into frame there’s a smoking hole where their face used to be.  Deadly head shots come out of nowhere.  Army medics have their hands soaked in bright red blood while trying to use scissors and thread to sew up wounds caked in wet sand. 

The action slows down at one point to focus on Hanks.  We haven’t even gotten to know his character yet, but we realize he is exhausted of this violence.  His hearing seems to deafen for a moment while he watches the horror quickly unfold as he puts his helmet back on only to have blood-stained water shower down over his head.  War is not meant for heroics and glamorization.  War only serves chaos and brutal death. 

Following this incredible opening sequence, one of the most impressive ever to start a film, Captain John Miller (Hanks) receives orders to locate the titled character, a paratrooper named Private James Francis Ryan (Matt Damon).  The army insists on sending the young private home to his grief-stricken mother, who has recently lost her other three sons in the conflict.  So, Miller recruits a handful of men consisting of fantastic actors like Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns, Vin Diesel, Adam Goldberg, Barry Pepper, Giovanni Ribisi and Jeremy Davies to make the trek across war torn Europe and rescue Private Ryan before he perishes as well.  How is that really fair though?

Any one of these men are sons to a worried mother back home.  The script for Saving Private Ryan by Robert Rodat has the men question why should they risk their own lives to find this one kid?  What makes him more special than any one of them?  Is the United States Army being fair?  Are they using this special mission as a means of propaganda?  Questions like this are irrelevant to the war department.  Just get him the hell out of there.

The journey of Miller’s squad is not just a simple hike.  At any given moment, they will come across a bombed-out town or another regimen who has just experienced their own kind of hell.  Further questions are asked when Miller recognizes an opportunity to take out an enemy battalion.  His own men suggest circumventing around this potential battle.  Miller won’t hear of it.  He’s a soldier.  Yet, after it is done, there is loss of life.  Should he have listened to their warnings or was he right to engage the enemy to avoid another team of allies suffering a terrible fate? 

Other dilemmas also come into play.  Should they escort a family and their young children who have lost their home?  The brutal dialogue of the script says that’s not their job.  Their goal is to take out the enemy and eventually rescue this one man.  Should an unarmed German prisoner be forced to dig his own grave and later be executed for the atrocities he’s committed?

War tests the ultimate limits of man.  What has to be done to allow us to finally, ultimately and justifiably shed ourselves of our humanity?  A correct answer is never provided in Saving Private Ryan.

Amid a series of astonishing battle scenes and images, two parts of the film stand out for me.  Following the loss of one of their comrades, there is disorder within the ranks.  This is where Tom Hanks takes control of a chaotic scene.  John Miller knows his soldiers have placed bets on what he does for a living back home.  Considering the strategist that Miller shows himself to be, its quite startling to find out what his occupation is.  It’s so surprising that Hanks as Miller uses it to temper his men which segues nicely into why Miller honors the mission assigned to him, even if it means risking his own life.  It’s not the best answer to why one man is more valuable than any other, but it’s the only one we are going to get. 

An even more powerful image comes to mind in the third act.  Jeremy Davies plays a Corporal assigned to the team to be a German and French interpreter.  He’s a soldier in this war, but he’s the last one you would want in combat.  As the American forces await the inevitable arrival of a German tank and a large number of troops to arrive, the men assign Davies to hold on to the long chains of ammunition and artillery.  He is draped in bullets around his neck and shoulders.  As the battle engages, shots are fired in all directions, men are quickly dispatched and Spielberg wisely has his cameras follow a helpless, weeping Davies do nothing but run from one end of the street to the other and up the stairs of a blown-out building.  He has all of the power in the world but he lacks the muster to kill and destroy which is what the nature of war demands.  He can even hear a man slowly die by stabbing in the floor above him. Yet, the Corporal can’t even rush to rescue his friend, and slaughter the enemy.  War destroys, but it also paralyzes man to act beyond an intrinsic nature of peace.  Each time I watch this scene, I can’t get past what this poor young man is truly capable of while being utterly helpless at the same time. 

I found Spielbergian techniques in Saving Private Ryan that hearken back to other celebrated moments in his film repertoire.  Tom Sizemore engages an enemy, only for both of them to run out of ammunition.  So, they wind up clumsily throwing their helmets at each other.  Indiana Jones might have done something like this for the sake of some form of slapstick.  Spielberg applies desperation to this scenario however.

The German tank at the center of the third act is somewhat reminiscent of the shark from Jaws.  Before we get an opportunity to see it, a focused Barry Pepper in a sniper’s bird’s nest gives a visual description of how big it really is and what accompanies it.  Later, Miller and Ryan have taken cover in a trench of rubble only to be overtaken by this beast as it careens over them.  The mouth of its cannon seems to come alive just before it blasts out a tower.  It’s just as scary and shocking as even Spielberg’s pictures of fantasy and adventure came before the release of this picture.  Every shot Steven Spielberg provides in any one of his films build towards an intrinsic and organic response from his viewers.  He always works with that goal in mind.  The tank is the tool used here.

The art direction is fascinating in this film as well.  A knocked over chair is picked up before a soldier stands it up as sturdy as he can on top of splintered wood and crumbled stone.  Sand on the beach is blasted up and out, sometimes splattering the lens of the camera.  Ocean water too.  Pockets of afterburn flames will be seen in the distance of a war-torn area.  The tangibility of these set pieces works cohesively with the distressed colors of a weathered and battle-stricken Europe. 

As chaotic as Spielberg demonstrates war to be, the editing is also commendable.  A war movie like this is not an action picture for the sake of escapism.  We don’t need to see the gun that fired the bullet that pierces the skull of a person.  We just need to see the person get a bullet that penetrates his helmet only to blow his head off to understand the unforgiving nature of war.  A man might be dialing up headquarters requesting air support, but he suddenly will not finish the conversation.  Editing allows the unexpected to become all too common in the midst of battle.

Saving Private Ryan is one of the best films ever directed by Steven Spielberg.  He had already shown real brutality not embedded in fantasy with films like The Color Purple, Empire Of The Sun and especially Schindler’s List.  Yet, with this picture, small factions of men, seeking world conquest, might have started this terrible conflict, but the movie does not concern itself with those instigators.  Instead, we witness the pawns at the disposal of war.  We see the collateral damage that suffer and die at the hands of unseen powers that be.  With Robert Rodat’s script, Steven Spielberg questions the value of one man versus a collection of men, and how any man, who may physically endure this terrible period in time, can also mentally survive long after it is all over. 

THE DEER HUNTER (1978)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

THE DEER HUNTER (1978)
Director: Michael Cimino
Cast: Robert De Niro, John Cazale, John Savage, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep
My Rating: 10/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 86% Certified Fresh

PLOT: An in-depth examination of the ways in which the Vietnam War impacts and disrupts the lives of several friends in a small steel mill town in Pennsylvania

[Author’s note: This will be the first in an ongoing series of reviews inspired by a book given to me as a birthday present by my long-suffering girlfriend.  Entitled Everyone’s a Critic, it challenges readers to watch a movie a week within a given category, then answer questions like, “Why did you choose this particular film” or “Do you feel this film deserved the award? Why or why not?”  Clearly designed to inspire discussion.  This category was “A Film That Has Won Best Picture.” This format is a work in progress, so I hope you’ll bear with me on future installments.

I am going to assume, for the most part, that most readers will have seen the movies being reviewed in this series.  Therefore, some spoilers may or will follow.  You have been warned.]


Once about every couple of years, I like to pick up and read Stephen King’s The Stand in its original uncut version.  My paperback copy runs to 1,141 pages, not including King’s foreword and a brief prologue.  Even Tolstoy would look at that thing and go, “Dude…edit yourself.”  But having read it numerous times now, I cannot imagine what could possibly have been excised from the edited version of King’s novel.  Every detail of that apocalyptic saga feels necessary.  Reading it is like falling into a fully realized alternate universe.

That’s what watching The Deer Hunter is like.  I can still remember the first time I watched it.  I knew its reputation as one of the greatest Vietnam War movies ever made, had heard of its harrowing Russian Roulette scene, and was intensely curious.  I popped it into the VCR, hit play…and for the first 70 minutes I got a slice-of-life drama about steel workers in a tiny Pittsburgh town (Clairton, for the detail-oriented) where, mere days before three friends ship off to Vietnam, one of them is getting married.  And the centerpiece is the wedding reception.  Ever watch a video of a wedding reception?  How high do you think a young teenager would rate its entertainment value on a scale of 1 to 10? 

I could not appreciate, as I do now, how vital this scene is.  Relationships are stated, expanded upon, and brought to a kind of cliffhanger.  Take the mostly non-verbal interplay between Linda (a luminous young Meryl Streep) and Michael (Robert De Niro).  Linda is clearly in a relationship with Nick (Christopher Walken), but it is painfully obvious that Michael and Linda have eyes for each other.  Mike watches intently from the bar as Linda dances at the reception, and whenever their eyes meet you can almost hear their hearts stop beating.  The oblivious Nick even pairs them on the dance floor while he visits the bar himself.  The awkwardness as Michael forces small talk and Linda shyly reciprocates is palpable.  And…is that Nick giving the two of them the eye at one point…?

As a kid, I wondered why this soap opera nonsense was necessary in a Vietnam film.  Of course, I didn’t know what was coming.  That’s the beauty and wonder of The Deer Hunter.  It challenges you to follow along with this miniature melodrama to give meaning to what comes next.

There is a key moment during the reception when an Army soldier wearing a green beret stops by the reception.  Mike, Nick, and Steven (John Savage), who are gung-ho about serving their country, yell their support and let him know how much they’re looking forward to killing the enemy.  The steely-eyed soldier raises his glass, looks away, and says, “Fuck it.”  It’s not terribly subtle, but the ominous nature of this moment always fills me with a sense of foreboding, even having seen the film many times by now.

But even after the reception is over, there is one more small-town pit stop to make before the movie gets to Vietnam.  (In fact, The Deer Hunter spends surprisingly little time in Vietnam.)  Michael and a group of friends including Nicky and Stan (John Cazale) go hunting for deer in the mountains as a kind of ritual before Nick, Mike, and Steven are deployed.  It is in this sequence that Oscar-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond’s talents are put to stunning use.  We are shown vistas of the Allegheny Mountains that are simply breathtaking, with Mike and his friends seen as mere dots in the mountainsides.  Choral music with a men’s choir singing in Russian is heard on the soundtrack, giving the sequence a majestic aura that must be seen and heard to be believed.

Then the hunt is over, and the boys all have one last drunken night at the bar owned by another friend, John (George Dzundza in an under-appreciated, realistic performance).  Here they all sing along to Frankie Valli and listen somberly as John plays a sad classical tune on his piano.  And then, in one of the film’s masterstrokes of editing, we slam-cut immediately to the jungles of Vietnam – no boot camp, no footage of them being trained or flown over there, just suddenly they’re there and the contrast between the carnage we experience in the first few minutes of Vietnam versus the rhythms of their lives in Clairton could not be more extreme.

In a horrific but mercifully brief sequence, we watch as a Viet Cong soldier calmly walks into a burned-out village, discovers a hidden pit holding terrified villagers, and remorselessly tosses a grenade inside.  We then watch as Mike, now a battle-hardened soldier, emerges from a hiding place with a flamethrower and burns the VC soldier alive.

The effect of this scene cannot be understated.  To witness Michael torching a soldier, even after that soldier committed a brutal act himself, is jarring.  And why is it so jarring?  Because we have seen Mike as a civilian, as a friend, as a would-be lover, during that lengthy sequence at the wedding reception and while hunting with his friends.  Admittedly, you got the sense that he could or would get violent if necessary.  (He’s clearly the alpha male of his “clique.”)  But this…I mean, damn.

Then, in one of those Hollywood conveniences that never get old, Mike is unexpectedly reunited with Nick and Steve who just happened to arrive at that very same village with another platoon of US soldiers.  And then, immediately after being reunited, they are captured by enemy forces, imprisoned with several enemy combatants in a riverside compound, and forced by their sadistic keepers to play Russian roulette with each other as the guards bet on the outcome.  Michael comes up with a horrifyingly logical escape plan: convince the guards to put THREE bullets in the chamber instead of one.

Much has been made regarding the historical inaccuracy of this scene.  To those arguments, I say: who cares?  As someone once said, riffing from Mark Twain, “Never let facts get in the way of truth.”  The truth of the matter is, the Vietnam experience was a modern-day horror show, leaving physical and psychic scars on its participants and on our country.  In my opinion, the Russian roulette scene can be interpreted as a symbol of how those soldiers, or ANY soldiers, must have felt every single day.  Going on a routine patrol in the jungle could have potentially lethal circumstances.  They rolled the dice every time they called in an airstrike, betting they didn’t get firebombed themselves.  Booby traps were everywhere.  How is life in a war zone that much different from being given a one-in-six chance at living or dying?

I’ve already gone into far more spoilers than I am accustomed to, so let’s just say this happens and that happens, Michael winds up making it back home, Steven is grievously wounded in the escape attempt, and Nick goes AWOL when, after making it back to a military hospital in Saigon, he wanders the streets at night and discovers an underground ring of lunatics who run a high-stakes game of Russian roulette.  And we’re still just at the mid-point of the film.

When we see Michael back home, the earlier sequences establishing the rhythms of small-town life and his feelings towards Linda, for example, all come into focus.  We need that reception and the hunting scenes so we can see how much Michael has changed.  For example, when Michael is arriving back home by taxi, still in full military dress, he spots a huge banner: “WELCOME HOME MICHAEL”.  He tells the driver to keep going.  In a hotel room later that night, he sits on the edge of his bed and rocks back and forth, winding up crouching against the wall.  He is completely unable to process how to deal with people anymore.  Or, at least, he doesn’t trust what he will or won’t say.  I watch that scene, and I feel such intense sympathy and empathy.  What he’s feeling, what he’s been through, what he’s seen, is so huge that he knows he’ll never be able to explain it to anyone who hasn’t been there.  He knows he’ll get questions like, “What was it like?  Did you kill anyone?  How are you feeling?  Where’s Nicky?”  I’ll never know what it’s like to fight in a war, but if I had gone through what he’d gone through, I wouldn’t have stopped either.

There is a heartbreaking scene where Linda, who is more than a little distraught that Nicky is AWOL, hesitantly suggests to Michael that they go to bed.  “Can’t we just comfort each other?”  Mike rebuffs her, but in a way that makes it clear he’d like to, regardless.  De Niro’s performance here is staggering.  As he walks out, he makes a statement, showcasing how much he is feeling but also how unable he is to articulate it: “I feel a lot of distance, and I feel far away.”  I knew exactly what he was talking about.

The very end of The Deer Hunter is one of the most emotionally shattering finales of any movie I’ve ever seen.  It ends with a simple song, first sung as a solo, then joined by everyone else at the table.  I will not reveal what happens to get us there.  Is it shameless manipulation?  Yes.  Does it work?  Yes, so I can forgive the “shameless” part.

One of the criticisms I’ve read more than once about The Deer Hunter is how “one-sided” it is.  To which I say, “Well, duh.”  The Deer Hunter is not presented as a history lesson or a lecture on the internal politics in the country of Vietnam during the war.  The Deer Hunter is intended to make us feel something.  It wants to show us what happens to a person who is exposed to the very worst side of human behavior and lives to talk about it.  It wants to remind us that a country can wave a flag and stand for what’s right and be willing to sacrifice its best and brightest souls for a righteous cause…but it must also be prepared for the aftermath.  The Deer Hunter is a somber prayer that our country remembers the cost it demands, and that it will take care of its own when the dust settles.

EMPIRE OF THE SUN

By Marc S. Sanders

Empire Of The Sun is a marvelous film.  Finally, I got to see it, and now I consider it to be Steven Spielberg’s transition film within his storied career. It’s also one of his best cinematic achievements.

Other than The Color Purple, the majority of his directorial work up to this point in 1987, consisted of adventure and escapism found in cliffhangers and children with the innocent curiosities to uncover what is underneath.  Empire Of The Sun contains all of these elements, but as the film progresses, it matures and grows up right before your eyes. 

Christian Bale makes his introductory role a performance to remember as young Jamey Graham.  He is a British child of unlimited privilege living in Shanghai with his parents, naïve and sheltered from the gradual Japanese occupation taking place in 1941 when China and Japan were in conflict with each other.  Jamey happily plays and gets into adventures with his model airplanes and his imagination of heroics.  One day, while at a costume party, he discovers a crashed war plane and then envisions his fantastical heroism.  Shortly thereafter, the fantasy becomes real when he comes upon a Japanese battalion, just yards away.  With his parents, they make a desperate escape from the city they and their ancestors have called home.  However, Jamey becomes separated from them amid the chaos within the surmounting crowds.  Now, this young child with no sense of self reliance has no choice but to become resourceful if he is to survive and reunite with his mom and dad.

Eventually, Jamey meets up with two Americans named Basie (an outstanding John Malkovich) and his sidekick Frank (Joe Pantoliano).  The three are sent to a Japanese Internment Camp forced to live and survive on bare necessities as the second World War rages on with the Americans joining the fight.

Spielberg treats his protagonist the same as he did with the Elliot character in E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.  Jamey happily lives in his own imagination until it is disrupted by an intrusion.  For films like Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and E.T., an alien of fantasy interrupts the protagonist’s lifestyle.  For Jamey, however, the reality of war harshly takes over.  It fascinated me how Empire Of The Sun, with a screenplay adaptation by Tom Stoppard of J.G. Ballard’s biographical account, seems to follow a familiar formula to Spielberg’s other pictures, and yet it reinvents itself with reality as opposed to fantasy.

Furthermore, Steven Spielberg does not abandon one of my favorite tropes of his as he makes the unseen the antagonist of the film.  When the veil is lifted, you can’t help but gasp.  Everyone knows he followed this approach in Jaws.  I also like to think he did this effectively with the German tank in Saving Private Ryan.  Here, he caught me completely off guard.  Young Jamey is dressed like Sinbad for Christmas jubilation at a costume party.  He’s happily tossing around one of his model planes and then when it flies out of sight over a grassy ridge, he runs over to the edge and finds something shocking beyond his treasured toy.  It’s a moment that happens early in the film and immediately tells me that this story will be bigger and more frighteningly real than meeting a cute, strange friend from another planet willing to eat my Halloween candy.

Spielberg’s production value is eye opening with thousands of extras within the scenes of mass exodus from Shanghai or within the internment camp.  Especially impressive is how he directs his extras to seem so overwhelming against young Christian Bale.  The child actor really followed direction, but more importantly it’s easy to see how method Bale might have been even at this young age.  He gets pushed and pulled and tugged on like I can only imagine an unforgiving circumstance of war would present itself.  Cinematics often praise Whoopi Goldberg’s debut in The Color Purple as one of the greatest introductions ever.  I have to put Bale’s performance up there as well.  The character arc that young Jamey experiences is well drawn out within Stoppard’s script, but Bale really performs the gradual change of a spoiled brat forced to become resourceful for not only himself but his comrades within the camp.  A director can tell a child actor where to walk or to sit or to stand.  A director can discuss the motivations of a particular scene.  With Christian Bale though, his performance throughout the film seems to remember where his character left off earlier in the story, where it has currently arrived and where it hopes to end up.  This young actor is so in tune with his character’s story. 

You may say John Malkovich serves as the staple mentor that every child protagonist has in so many other stories.  Basie is not that simple though.  A child will be quick to trust anyone he comes in contact with.  Spielberg and Stoppard know it’s not that easy though.  Malkovich is that dynamic actor who never seems forthright with his portrayals.  There’s something he always seems to hide from the audience.  Is he a snake ready to strike?  Is he a gentle pup ready for an embrace?  I never trusted how Basie would end up with Jamey by the film’s conclusion.  Malkovich delivers unpredictability so well.

Miranda Richardson is credited as a once wealthy friend to Jamey’s parents.  She’s not given much dialogue or scene work, but with the times she appears on screen Spielberg gradually breaks her down.  At first, she is well dressed in her finest linens insisting that her husband explain who they are to the Japanese forces.  Later and later in the film, the strength of her proud stature slowly crumbles.  It’s nice work and it’s crushing to watch.

Notable “tough guy” Joe Pantoliano goes through a similar transition.  A capture of him with Spielberg’s camera eventually focuses on a weeping and weak man.  Like much of the film, it is so unexpected.

There are epic overhead shots of panic and riots within the streets of Shanghai.  There are amazing moments where aerial attacks coming from nowhere with Jamey depicted running in a parallel line along the trajectory of a bi-plane.  It’s such a sweeping, personal story but the visual effects and camera work are so impressive as well.  The photography is striking in bright sunlight amid fireball missile strikes.  It is dazzling to watch.

As I noted earlier, Empire Of The Sun is Steven Spielberg’s transitional film.  Once again, he focuses on the innocent, young and unaware hero who is forced to become wise and most especially sensitive to a change in setting and circumstance.  With Empire Of The Sun, Steven Spielberg demonstrated that he could mature himself away from fantasy and embrace reality. 

I think Empire Of The Sun is an absolute masterpiece.

HACKSAW RIDGE

By Marc S. Sanders

“Please Lord. Help me get one more.”

Desmond Dawes rescued 75 American soldiers during the assault on Hacksaw Ridge in Okinawa, Japan following the United States’ entry into World War II, and he did it without ever lifting a weapon.

War pictures have become somewhat boring to me lately. The battle scenes all blend together. The main characters seem to be the same each time. They all have a different heritage (Polish, Jewish, Italian). There’s the soldier who is the bully. The one who’s brother died in battle so he enlisted. The platoon leader has to bark orders to such a degree that audience must hate him, only to love him later on when he makes the ultimate sacrifice. It’s become all the same.

Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge overcomes those tropes for most of the picture but at times it still suffers from that curse of sameness. It’s only when he returns to focus on his lead actor, Andrew Garfield, who plays Dawes, that we see something special. Dawes’ reasons for not lifting a weapon are vastly explored and they are convincingly justifiable when his domestic life is depicted under the tyranny of an abusive, alcoholic father suffering from his own demons of war. Hugo Weaving is Desmond’s father. Why isn’t he getting any accolades for his performance? He’s fantastic.

Garfield is very good in the role even if he really doesn’t have to shape a character arc for himself. His performance is all about maintaining his character’s convictions. He doesn’t change. Rather, the men he serves with do.

Teresa Palmer plays his wife, Dorothy, and she’s good as well. She’s not wasted in the script (like I found Michelle Williams in Manchester By The Sea or Rooney Mara to be in Lion.). I only wish Gibson showed one last scene between the characters before the film closed out.

Vince Vaughn was an issue for me, miscast as the platoon’s drill sergeant. He’s been pigeonholed in too many comedic roles I guess that he failed to convince me of his authority here. Maybe that’s my problem. I dunno.

Hacksaw Ridge is another very good picture from 2016, but it is weighted down by graphic battle scenes, all well played out, mind you, but all done before. It’s not until late in the film that Garfield steps up to show why Dawes was so special to this particular moment in history. That’s when the emotion of the film kicks in and the interest heightens itself.

1917 (2019)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Sam Mendes
Cast: Dean-Charles Chapman, George MacKay, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch
My Rating: 10/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 89% Certified Fresh

PLOT: Two British soldiers during the First World War are given an impossible mission: deliver a message deep into enemy territory that will stop 1,600 men, including one of the two soldiers’ brothers, from walking straight into a deadly trap.


Bear with me for a second…I promise I’ll actually get to the movie in a second.

I’m not a professional movie critic.  I write reviews simply because it amuses me to do so, and because one of my friends made it possible for him and I to post our reviews in an online forum.  For about two months, though, I haven’t written a single review.  I pondered this with Marc a little while ago, and the only reason I could come up with was that I didn’t feel INSPIRED to write something.

Not that I haven’t seen good movies in those two months. Waves, Uncut Gems, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Jumanji: The Next Level, Frozen 2, Little Women, Bombshell, maybe one or two others – they were all good, even great.  (In the case of Uncut Gems and Waves, I’d even call them “must-see” events.)  But I never felt compelled to run home and put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard.  I simply felt that I had nothing to contribute where those movies were concerned.

Well, tonight I saw 1917, and now I have to say, this is a different case altogether.

For anyone who’s not quite aware of why this movie is so special, aside from it just being really good, 1917 was hyped as being told in one single shot with a camera that follows two soldiers through battlefields and countrysides as they attempt to deliver an important message to a distant company of English soldiers.  No cuts to different angles, no cuts at all, in fact.  (Actually, there IS a single cut, but more on that later.)

While I originally felt it was a bit of a stunt to get it noticed at Oscar time (remember Birdman [2014]?), after seeing the movie it was abundantly clear that this was no mere trick to dazzle an audience with.  This specific story is particularly suited to this specific method of filming.  It forces the audience to empathize with these two soldiers immediately, and only them.  I was reminded for some reason of Saving Private Ryan, and a line spoken by Tom Sizemore: “This time the mission is a man.”  Well, this time, the men are the mission, and the mission is paramount.  The single-take strategy has the uncanny ability to put us in the shoes of these soldiers more so than many other war films.  You feel like you’re right there in the mud with the empty artillery shells and the corpses and the rats.

And that’s the supreme achievement of the movie: its ability to put us there and KEEP us there for two hours without ever calling attention to the fact that, “Hey, we haven’t cut yet and it’s been over a half hour!”  A lot of that has to do with camera placement and movement and, of course, the actors’ ability to keep us engaged.

But one thing that I kept noticing throughout the movie was the small details.  I’m not going to remember them all, but they included:

  • At one point, the British soldiers walk through an abandoned German bunker.  In a throwaway detail, the name “KLARA” is seen scrawled on one of the walls.  The camera doesn’t focus on it, but it just passes by.
  • We encounter a group of British soldiers, and of them is a Sikh.  The other soldiers are doing bad impressions of their superior officers, but the Indian’s impression is clearly better than the other Englishmen, with proper diction, upper-class accent, everything.
  • In the British trenches, various sections have unique names.  The one I remember most clearly is “Paradise Alley.”
  • As they walk, one of our two heroes notices cherry trees, and he quickly rattles off several different varieties of cherries.  He knows them because his family has an orchard back home.
  • An intense scene where someone has to literally wade through dozens of corpses.
  • In one remarkable scene, the movie pauses to listen to a song. Fighting is imminent, death may arrive at any moment, but for a brief moment, everything stops. It’s a brilliant moment…almost holy.

Little things like that.  The reason I bring them up is because some of them seemed unnecessary to the story, but they colored the story so that it felt more real than most.  And the closing credits reveal that this movie is based on stories told to director Sam Mendes by his grandfather, who served in World War One.  So many, if not all, of those little details were probably one hundred percent REAL details, the kind of details that could only be remembered by someone who was there.

Another reason the movie is so suspenseful is because we’ve become subtly programmed to believe that, in a war movie, the ending can’t be too Hollywood; otherwise, it’s not real enough.  The soldiers must deliver a message.  Will they even survive long enough to deliver the message?  Assuming they do, will the officers receiving the message even follow the order?  A civilian appears at one point…will they live?  They engage in combat…who will live and who will die?  I was on edge the whole movie because I never really felt “safe”, which was EXACTLY the kind of feeling you want when you’re watching a war movie.  In my opinion.

Now, about that whole single-shot thing.  There actually IS one cut, a SINGLE cut, during the whole movie.  You’ll know it when it happens.  But when you’ve seen as many movies as I have, you’ll also notice “invisible wipes”, where the camera passes by something in the foreground – a pillar, or a rock, or a tree – that comes in between the camera and the person/object being filmed.  Using clever editing and lighting, you can cut two shots together using that pillar/rock/tree as the splicing point.  And there is a LOT of that going on in this movie.

I’m not taking anything away from the achievement of the film, it’s spectacular.  It’s just something I noticed that I could not UN-notice for the duration of the film.  A minor quibble, nothing more.

1917 is definitely a top contender for Best Picture of 2019.  I have only seen a handful of World War I movies, but this is certainly one of the very best.  I’d rank it up there with Kubrick’s Paths of Glory any day.

QUICK TAKE: Jarhead (2005)

By Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Sam Mendes
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper
My Rating: 10/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 61%

PLOT: A newly minted Marine sniper is sent to Iraq as part of Operation Desert Shield, only to find himself slowly losing his mind as he waits for a chance to make his first kill.


If Three Kings was the Gulf War version of Kelly’s Heroes, then Jarhead is the Gulf War Full Metal Jacket.  It’s a glorious paradox: a war film where it looks like the hero may never get to fire his weapon.

Jake Gyllenhaal is phenomenal in the lead role of Swofford, but Jamie Foxx steals every scene he’s in, as Staff Sergeant Sykes.

There’s beautiful imagery in the film, from the oil fires in the desert, to an arresting dream sequence where sand makes an appearance from a very surprising place.

I don’t know why, but I empathized a LOT with the Swofford role.  He learns how to use his sniper rifle with deadly force, he finally gets shipped out to where the fighting is…and air power nearly makes him obsolete.  What are they even doing there if airplanes can end the battle in minutes instead of hours?

There’s a great line when someone hears a helicopter flying overhead, blaring The Doors from loudspeakers.  A soldier looks up with exasperation: “That’s Vietnam music…can’t we get our own music?”  These guys wanted to fight, to carve their place into the history books with honor, and blood.  They wanted to distinguish themselves from their fathers or grandfathers who fought in other faraway countries.  The soldiers in the Gulf War of this movie wanted to “do it right.”

Jarhead offers searing insight disguised by a simple story.  It puts me into the head of a soldier who wants to do the right thing, the honorable thing – hell, ANYTHING – and who finds himself frustrated.  It struck me, and still does strike me, on a level I never expected.  I don’t know if I’ve clearly elaborated that with this review.  But there it is.