The story begins with Joey’s birth and ends with his ascension to the stars like E.T. (note: some facts have been altered) and in between he goes through a harrowing journey in turnip farming, WWI, etc. His primary equine-human relationship is with a youth named Albert (Jeremy Irvine), who is there at his birth and later becomes his owner and trainer. Despite going way beyond anyone’s expectations in his indentured servitude, the purchase of non-plow-ready pretty boy Joey financially ruins the family, their lives are destroyed and they have to sell him for cheap to the army for even more cruel and unusual treatment by different noble, handsome Englishmen.

During his tenure as a war horse the ownership of Joey’s body, soul and dignity is transferred between the British army, the German army and a little French farm girl. So we briefly see the war from different perspectives and we see that the people on both sides and caught in the middle are all just people. They have different accents but they all conveniently speak English and all share a love of forcing this particular horse to nearly kill itself by carrying people around and dragging heavy metal equipment through rough terrain. So why do we have wars? We’re all the same.

What I heard about this movie that I thought sounded promising was that it was about “war as seen through the eyes of a horse.” What I should’ve realized is that that means through the emotionless, uncomprehending eyes of a horse. I mean jesus, we’ve seen a thousand movies about how man can’t comprehend war. What, is a horse gonna figure out a new angle where it makes more sense? Are his simple animal ways gonna solve a puzzle we’re overthinking? And then is he gonna stamp his foot in Morse code to explain it to us?

No, this horse doesn’t radiate any kind of intelligence or feeling. I get nothing. In his defense, he is a horse. He probly hasn’t gotten a chance to hone his skills on the stage or anything like that. In fact there is a play version of this and they used a puppet. Probly didn’t even let this guy audition. Nobody gives horses a chance.

I guess the play itself is based on a children’s book which is told in the point of view of the horse, giving him human words and thoughts. In the movie he doesn’t talk, so he’s just a horse. He doesn’t even get a part where there’s a girl horse and they flutter their eyes at each other because of love. He’s not so much a character as a mcmuffin, a thing that everybody’s trying to get because of its buttery English muffin bun. Yeah, he runs around, does a little horse parkour on the battlefield, but he doesn’t have much in the way of thoughts or emotions and not too many deliberate actions. He’s on a leash or in a barn, he’s auctioned off a couple times, sold a couple times, found and claimed a couple times, gets rescued. He’s a slave, used as a vehicle or a tool to pull cannons up a hill. Even in the hands of his true owner he’s forced to nearly kill himself plowing a field full of rocks. And he’s not the Cinque of beasts of burden. He never figures out how to say “Give us us free.”

By the way Joey also has a horse buddy that goes through alot of the adventures with him. Like Morgan Freeman in AMISTAD he adds his dignified presence but doesn’t get a huge amount to do.

I’ll say this about Joey, even if it doesn’t translate to film he’s clearly got alot of charisma. For some reason Albert’s dad willingly pisses off his landlord and sinks his whole farm to buy Joey, believing he’s not the type of horse he needs, just because “he’s something, isn’t he?” Albert knows as soon as he sees him that he’ll be “the one to save us,” only Mom sees him and immediately thinks he’ll be the end of them. When a guy in charge of war horses first sees him he’s so impressed by him that he’s sad that he has to use him for this purpose. The British captain loves this horse, so do the German soldiers that get him, and the little girl, and the two opposing soldiers that save him and then argue over who gets to keep him. Then the soldiers all come together to try to convince the doctor not to execute the horse. Yeah, sure, he’s dying, but he’s something!

Joey’s something all right. He’s lucky. Not wild desert horse lucky, but manages-to-survive-a-bunch-of-torment lucky, at least. He miraculously makes it through the horrors of WWI trench warfare, and then what does he do? Does he stop to reflect? No. While the soldiers ring a bell to commemorate the end of the war, and talk about how important it is to remember and appreciate all the brothers they’ve lost, Joey is in the barn eating hay like nothing happened. Because – and I cannot emphasis this enough – he is a horse.

The humans talk about Joey like he’s a hero for making it through that nightmare, like war is as profound an experience for him as for them. But is the horse gonna have PTSD? Actually, he might. I wouldn’t be surprised if animals could get that. I think I read something about pets being traumatized by Hurricane Katrina. But will he go to his grave with the guilt and shame of having taken lives, like Albert’s father does? No. He’s a horse. Even if he’d killed anybody I don’t think he’d give it another thought. He’d just eat more hay, later casually take a shit right where he’s standing, etc.

So I don’t have the connection to the horse that I think you’re supposed to have, and in fact having all the people linked by the horse kinda made it harder for me to relate to them, because their whole lives seem to revolve around a horse. What am I supposed to think about a kid who tries to enlist so he can go to war with his horse? One of the soldiers even seems creeped out by Albert’s emotional farewell to Joey before he’s old enough to go with him (it’s meant as a joke though because he suggests that it wouldn’t be weird if it was a dog).

Later Albert becomes a soldier and he carries a drawing of Joey that he looks at like it’s a picture of his girlfriend back at home. Some dick makes fun of him, asking if he’s gonna write a letter to his horse. I’m not sure if this is the case, but it makes it seem like the whole reason he’s in the military is to look for his horse. Come on kid, I know it’s sad that your dad gave away a horse you liked, but this is years later. You are just becoming a man. You are in a war zone. I’m pretty damn sure you’ve never been with a woman. You may very well die, and will definitely see your peers dying all around you. If you haven’t already taken human lives, you’re about to. That’s your job. And you know how your dad feels about what he did in his war, he won’t even talk about it. What I am saying to you is that if you’re still mooning about your pet horsey you’re a fucking idiot.

Yeah, I know, beautiful creatures, blah blah blah. A connection between a man and his steed. And not in a ZOO type of way. I get it. But Albert doesn’t know he’s in a movie about a horse. He should have, like, other shit that he thinks about sometimes. Girls. Baseball. Botany. Something. When the horse comes back into your life we’ll be happy for you. But you gotta have a life first.

So this presented a problem for me as a viewer. I can’t relate to the horse and then the humans aren’t in it enough for me to build a strong connection to them. So when one character who has come in contact with the horse returns unexpectedly later it’s a great turn of events but I feel like it doesn’t have as much impact as it should because that seemed like just one short chapter earlier and not a full emotional experience.

Despite all this I still kind of liked this movie because it really started to click with me in the last third or so. It started with that shot you’ve seen in the trailer where Joey is running through a huge battle, leaping over trenches and dodging bombs. The first part of the movie is an old-fashioned, heart-on-its-sleeve, Walt Disney Pictures type feel. But then it leaves the idyllic BABE-like farm (complete with comic relief goose) for the grey skies of hopeless combat. A BLACK STALLION type movie gives way to a harsher-than-expected PG-13 version of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN type battle scenes. But for the most part Spielberg doesn’t go for that Fubar/combat photographer style he popularized. The running scene especially has smooth pans through the gorgeously photographed horrors. It’s pretty enthralling.

There is a harrowing SPOILER moment when Joey starts to get tangled in barbed wire, and he’s dragging a bunch of shit and still hauling ass and I went from oh no, he’s in trouble to oh wait, it’s like the plow, he’s gonna get through this! to oh shit, that doesn’t look like CGI, how the fuck do they do that? And then I won’t say what it is but this leads to by far the most compelling sequence of the movie, which is not so much about the horse but about two humans from opposite sides of the war having an odd bonding experience. That, at least, is a classic scene.

I guess in a way WAR HORSE is an animal version of EMPIRE OF THE SUN. Like Jamie he’s not able to understand the uncontrollable forces at work around him. He just has to accept the shit life throws at him and try to, like, run through it really fast, and jump over some stuff. But we see what’s going on around him so we have a little more of an understanding of it than he does, and also are able to see what the different sides have in common. He doesn’t really worry about obtaining material possessions (unless you count hay) and doesn’t learn as much as Jamie, but he does manage to keep transporting Albert’s dad’s war pendant, so that’s sort of like his version of Jamie’s box of mementos or Victor in THE TERMINAL’s peanut can full of jazzman autographs.

Despite those similarities I’m very skeptical as to whether this horse will go on to the type of career Christian Bale has. I’d love to be proven wrong, but I doubt I will.

But that’s stupid. This one’s about “the good war” and still makes it look like something to avoid at all costs. The famous Omaha Beach invasion sequence near the beginning is a total bloodbath, soldiers pouring off the boats into waves of machine gun bullets. They might as well just be jumping from a diving board directly into a giant fan, it seems like.

Just like everybody always said, this is an extremely well made movie. But I also shoulda known it was important for me to watch as one of the key originators of our current low point in action filmatism. Much like JAWS accidentally unleashed decades of expensive summer movies this great sequence convinced a thousand lesser directors that if the camera isn’t steady the action is automatically more thrilling. Spielberg and director of photography Janusz Kaminski (COOL AS ICE [seriously, look it up]) shot the battle like a combat photographer, putting our point of view on shaky ground right in the thick of it. Bullets and shrapnel whiz by our ears, things explode all around us, at least once blood gets on the lens, acknowledging that we are watching this through a camera.

But of course this is Steven Spielberg, he’s a professional. He has pride. He’s not gonna just whip the thing around at random and pretend he was filming something good. Even while intentionally creating chaos he’s secretly being careful, maintaining the audience’s sense of geography. We feel like we need to stay on our toes to know what’s going on, but we do know what’s going on. The soldiers repeatedly use and discuss the meaning of the word “fubar,” so it’s only right that the style be called fubar style. But when Spielberg uses it it’s not beyond all recognition. It’s only when other people use it.

It’s also telling that even after the huge popularity of this scene Spielberg didn’t keep using the handheld style. For example WAR HORSE has big battle scenes (SPOILER) and they use the more traditionally Spielbergian smooth crane shots. He obviously considered it to be the right way to shoot this particular movie, not every action scene made for now on. I think there was a bit of a misunderstanding there, I hope it gets cleared up.

As great as the scene is I have to think I missed out on some of its power by seeing it all these years later after many imitators and hearing all about it. At the time it was considered so shocking they sent out warnings to the theaters, and there were reports of veterans not being able to handle it because they’d never seen their experience depicted as accurately (or as horrifyingly?) on screen. There are guts spilling and way too many people dying and shit, but I guess I’m desensitized.

What I really like about this sequence is the look on the face of Tom Hanks as everything goes south. It could’ve been some grizzled Tom Berenger type, and it would’ve made alot of sense, but putting Hanks in the role changes it. He’s not a traditional movie warrior, he has vulnerability. It makes sense when he says he’s a school teacher back at home. He’s a professional, he’s good at his job, he stays quiet until something needs to be said, and they all respect him for it. But also when he gets on that beach and sees human bodies exploding all around him – his men, that he led there – he looks horrified. He’s Tom Hanks, not Rambo.

Man, this cast is a real who-was-about-to-be-who of late ’90s Hollywood. I knew Vin Diesel was gonna be in there in his first not-directed-by-himself role – didn’t know what a big part it was, though. Matt Damon fresh off of GOOD WILL HUNTING. Paul Giamatti the year after he blew up in PRIVATE PARTS (he mainly did movies with “Private” in the title). Giovanni Ribisi before, uh, THE OTHER SISTER. Tom Sizemore before DTV and sex tapes. Did you know the wrong Private Ryan they find first is that guy Nathan Fillion that the internet loves? And I noticed Max Martini from REDBELT. And of course Jeremy Davies from Justified, Barry Pepper from THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA, Ed Burns, Adam Goldberg, Dennis Farina, Leland Orser (the guy who freaks out in ALIEN RESURRECTION), Harve Presnell, Bryan Cranston… even Ted Danson? Shit man, everybody’s in this movie. Unless they’re a woman, then they’re pretty much for sure not in it. Sorry ladies.

They put together a good group of characters and put them in an interesting situation. First we see the worst nightmare of combat, a total massacre. Then we find out how back home this poor woman has lost all but one of her sons. We see concern about this old lady somehow make its way through the bureaucracy to the top and become a mission: go find this Private Ryan dude and get him the fuck out of there in one piece for the sake of his poor mother. I mean they signed up for it and everything but we don’t want that on our consciences.

It’s a nice idea: war is hell, save this guy’s ass, this family has sacrificed enough, cut them a small break. But when the idea is actually put into motion it brings up alot of questions. What about these guys on the mission, what if a bunch of them die trying to save one guy? What about their mothers? And of course when they actually find him what do you think he’s gonna do, is he gonna want to go home? No, he’s there to fight. If his brothers have all died for the cause he has all the more reason to stubbornly keep going. So nobody’s exactly happy with this situation. There is some complaining, some arguing, some learning, some intense sniper attacks reminiscent of FULL METAL JACKET.

To me Davies has the most tragic character. He’s the one that hasn’t been burned by war yet. He holds onto his pre-war values. He has a sense of honor. Instead of killing an enemy soldier he lets him go, with the idea that his threat has been neutralized and it’s better to save a human life, and what if the tables were turned, what would he want to happen to himself. But then that’s the guy that ends up shooting Hanks. So this kid’s whole code is crushed. The lesson he learns is the same one that Diesel learned too late: don’t do “the decent thing” (in his case trying to carry a little girl to safety). So at the end this guy’s a total mess, his decency proven unsuitable for the world. He’s the one I want to see in the graveyard at the end, because what the hell happened to that poor guy?

You know, I I used to always confuse Jeremy Davies with Henry Thomas. It would’ve been kinda cool to see Elliott show up in other Spielberg pictures. Maybe Thomas turned it down so they decided to hire a lookalike and he turned out to be good. I don’t know that to be true but maybe I’ll go ahead and submit it to IMDB trivia.

Another missed opportunity for a Spielberg self-homage is when they talk about the same plane li’l Christian Bale was so excited about in EMPIRE OF THE SUN. “They’re Tankbusters, sir. P-51s.” Would it have killed ‘im to say “Cadillac of the Sky”?

I know some people think the wraparound scenes of elderly Private Ryan visiting the cemetery are corny, but it seemed to me like they make the movie’s point. Without those scenes it’s another story of things that happened a long time ago, removed from our lives. With them it connects “the war” to our everyday lives back home, the grey faded film stock to a sunny afternoon. It shows us how everybody that survives a war is a person with a life and a family.

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is all about the horrible math of war: Miller tells himself that every man that dies under his command is being traded for more lives saved. And they worry that the Germans they don’t kill could go on to kill other Americans. Ryan is left his whole life worrying about whether he lived a life that justified that equation. And that also asks those of us who aren’t veterans to live lives that justify all those sacrifices. Shit, I gotta get going.

“Excuse me everyone – I surrender!”

Wow – for some reason I never had any interest in EMPIRE OF THE SUN before. Turns out it’s great and sort of a beginning for alot of things. It’s Spielberg’s first WWII drama. One of Christian Bale’s first movies. The one that gave Ben Stiller the idea for TROPIC THUNDER. etc.
It’s a great story about a kid trapped in a conflict he could never understand – not just in the sense that war is incomprehensible, but also in the sense that his situation is fuckin complicated. In fact he spends an early chunk of the movie going around trying to surrender and everybody just laughs at him.

See, Bale plays this kid Jamie and he’s not an idealized kid, he’s kind of a little brat. His family is British but they live in a mansion in Shanghai, a city under the control of Japan. Colonists under occupation. They can tell something’s going on with the Japanese soldiers – that’s because they’re on standby because they’re about to attack Pearl Harbor (is this a prequel to 1941!?) and then the everyday conflict between China and Japan is gonna become much more serious.

Jamie’s family sides with the Chinese, because they feel like that’s their people, but the Chinese – being their maids and drivers and shit – don’t exactly side with them. Jamie likes the Japanese because he’s obsessed with airplanes and he thinks their Zeros are cool. To him the ominous signs of looming war are an exciting time, like a parade coming through town. I mean, what the hell does he know about war other than a list of the coolest planes and the romantic painting on the huge GONE WITH THE WIND billboard he walks past in town?

When the shit goes down Jamie gets separated from his parents – we don’t even know if they’re alive or not. Spielberg didn’t know that the key to box office gold was to have some bungling burglars come after him and he throws stuff at their testes, so instead the movie is about his struggle to survive through the war.

First he pulls an OMEGA MAN and lives in abandoned mansions scrounging canned food and candy. In one great scene he rides a bike through the house. It’s a joyful moment of rebellion and playfulness and at the same time kind of a scary sign that this kid might not be cut out to survive this situation. Does he understand how serious this is? No, he’s just a spoiled little boy. Well, he was. Not so spoiled anymore. Now it’s time for him to prove his salt.

Eventually he ends up in a series of internment camps, where he befriends Basie (John Malkovich), a resourceful survivor of questionable morals, plus other adults (Joe Pantoliano, Ben Stiller) and learns lessons about disease, ass-kissing, looting dead bodies, networking and protecting your stuff. He has to deal with sadistic generals, adults who’ve lost their minds under the stress, people trying to steal his stuff. Doesn’t ever have to do homework though, so that’s probly a plus for a kid I guess.

Jamie was just born into this. It’s not his fault his ancestors colonized this place, or that his family is rich. Give him some blame for bossing the maids around like they were Shane Hurlbut, but he’s too young to know better. He’s got nothing to do with any of this. He’s just a dumb little kid who loves airplanes. He builds a relationship with a Japanese kid on the other side of the barbed wire who plays with toy planes just like he does. We see glimpses of that kid’s life and how he wants nothing more than to fly one of those Zeros. How did they convince this kid that the best thing in the world would be a suicide mission? Well, Jamie would probly want the same thing in his shoes. Some higher up assholes set this machine in motion and kids like this don’t even know they’re getting crushed between the gears.

Basie teaches Jamie all about stuff: getting stuff, protecting stuff. He knows where all the top grade stuff is, so even when he gets out he’s all about driving around finding the best loot. He dresses like he’s in ROAD WARRIOR! Jamie has to learn for himself that there’s more to life than stuff.

It is also important to note that FIST OF LEGEND took place in the Shanghai International Settlement a few years before these events begin. It’s possible that little Jamie pranced condescendingly past Chen Zhen on the street at some point.

For about a year David Lean was gonna direct this, with Spielberg producing. Eventually Lean gave up and tagged in Spielberg, saying he was better at directing kids. Kinda similar to what happened with Kubrick and A.I. in a way. Sadly Lean only directed one more movie, the sequel ANOTHER STAKEOUT, before his death in 1991. (more trivia for you: I made that up, he didn’t direct any more movies, including that one.) The script was by Tom Stoppard, the playwright known for ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD as well as BRAZIL and of course that Craig Baxley movie starring Charlie Sheen as a fireman who snaps and instead of going on tour like Charlie did in real life he goes on a rampage.

Spielberg also got an uncredited rewrite out of Menno Meyjes (RICOCHET). It’s based on a book written by J.G. Ballard which was in turn partly based on a life lived by J.G. Ballard. He didn’t get separated from his parents, but did live in camps like that. I should’ve figured out it was semi-autobiographical ’cause the kid is always excited about words. Oh, writers.

I never read a J.G. Ballard but of course he’s the guy who wrote the book that became Cronenberg’s CRASH. Believe it or not this does have some parallels thanks to Jamie’s fetishistic love of airplanes. When he’s on that roof he yells about “touching” the plane by feeling its heat, about tasting it – “Oil and cordite!” A precursor to Deborah Kara Unger touching her nipples to a plane to get off.

This is a great story and it’s full of great moments, odd little occurrences that reflect the surreal unpredictability of war: little Jamie dressed as a pirate for a party stumbling into an entire platoon of soldiers hiding behind a hill. Accidentally amusing his captors by saluting their planes. Bewildering them by singing with a voice that seems like a dream inside a prison camp (a special skill he learned in the choir at school).

It also has some incredible effects and stunts involving the planes. When Jamie’s on the roof some pilots fly by really low and god damn if it doesn’t look real. If so I can’t believe Spielberg did that after what happened on THE TWILIGHT ZONE. But obviously they were more careful on this one.

Turns out Bale was a good child actor. Here he is playing children of privilege like Bruce Wayne and Patrick Bateman, but without having to learn an accent. I really think this experience probly helped form him into the actor he is now. His character has the intense focus and then he starts to crack under the pressure. I love that scene I already mentioned where he’s on the roof watching Allied bombers attack. He should be ducking for cover but instead he’s nerding out about the aircraft, yelling about the “P-51 – Cadillac of the sky!” When he’s reduced to just “HORSE POWER!!!” I think that’s the crazy Bale we know today.

It’s one of those movies that keeps you riveted and leaves you feeling exhausted at the end, you’ve been through so much. I mean, they’re not trying to kill him as much but it still reminded me a little bit of THE PIANIST. He goes through this whole ordeal and it’s a breath of fresh air when it’s finally over. You feel so good for him. Except he’s so young he’s kind of clueless about what’s going on around him. Spielberg has that reputation as some kind of saccharine, happy ending type of guy, which I don’t think is fair (except TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE and HOOK). This movie turns that accusation on its head.

That’s the best trick of the movie: it’s cleverly shown from Jamie’s naive perspective. He doesn’t always understand what’s going on, so the John Williams score doesn’t either. The best example of this is when he sees the atomic bomb blast but he thinks it’s a soul going up to Heaven. He watches in awe and the music acts like he’s watching E.T.’s space ship or something. The filmatism makes it look beautiful, and we know better, but the music doesn’t let on.

(Weirdly, Spielberg and Williams did a similar thing with a mushroom cloud in KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL, but it was more of an action setpiece punchline in that one.)

(Have you guys checked that one out yet? I still think you would like it.)

EMPIRE OF THE SUN is a good one. I know it got good reviews and everything but if there is an under-appreciated Spielberg joint this might be it. It doesn’t come up that much after the huge success of the other two WWII movies he did, but it’s another really interesting and completely different perspective of the same worldwide catastrophe.

Until now I hadn’t seen LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. (Don’t worry, I’ve seen TREE OF LIFE, I’m pretty cultured.) I’ve actually been wanting to see this for years, but I kept missing its showings in the 70mm Film Festival they have every year at the Cinerama. Then I’d consider renting it on DVD and think “But… 70mm! It’ll be back. I know it will!” This year I finally got tired of that cycle and made sure not to miss it.

LAWRENCE was made for 70mm just like AVATAR was made for 3D or POLYESTER was made for smellovision. It takes advantage of the giant screen with shots showing the characters from far away, a little dot in front of a sunset or in a screenful of sand. As the movie goes on it has more and more scenes showing hundreds of men on camels or horses. How the fuck did they organize all those people and get them to do the right thing at the right time? It’s a kind of massive undertaking that will probly never be tried again because of the computers. I’m sure RED CLIFF was a huge pain in the ass to do too, but they had some tools to make it easier.

From those enormous shots it’ll cut to a closeup and O’Toole has these blue eyes that pop out of the giant screen. You can see why he stuck out among Arabs even in a movie where it’s mostly white people playing Arabs. For example Alex Guiness plays Prince Feisal. They didn’t have Tony Shalhoub to do those roles yet.

Another weird thing: in a cast of thousands I swear there are almost no women. No wives, no princesses, nothing. I actually couldn’t remember seeing any women at all, even in the crowd shots, but somebody said there were some dead women in a village that got attacked. So, no reason to fret, ladies. There’s some representation there.

Maybe it’s for the best that they aren’t in there. I doubt the women were treated very well during these events. Might make the characters less sympathetic if you saw that.

The story remains relevant in a whole bunch of ways. I guess colonialism and the clash between east and west are never gonna become dated topics, are they? This story has westerners genuinely trying to bring “freedom” to the Arab world, while their governments have more cynical motives for their involvement. The government looks at the Arabs as “savages,” misjudges how to deal with them militarily, and gets stuck in a conflict that keeps on going. Even the non-violent, pure-motived Lawrence gets his hands (and other parts) bloody.

The tribes don’t get along, and the Westerners just can’t understand the conflicts. Lawrence tries to get them to work it out basically by saying “Come on fellas, be reasonable,” but (as we continue to find out) it’s not that simple.

There’s a great jump after the intermission, almost like it’s a 2-part movie like RED CLIFF or KILL BILL. Before the break he’s ready to go back to the desert and start a rebellion, after the break he’s in the thick of it, travelling with a small army that reveres him, leading them in attacks on trains.

It’s an uncomfortable spot for the modern viewer. On one hand I like this character, and watching a character you like plant a bomb for a sneak attack on the bad guys is inherently exciting. On the other hand I can’t put it out of my head that this is alot like militants in Iraq and Afghanistan setting IEDs on the roads to attack American soldiers. Does that make us the Turks? Does it make them freedom fighters? Is there a chance some of them have seen this movie, or know of it, that it’s played some part in the creation of the image they see of themselves as heroes?

We – and by “we” I guess I really mean “I” – tend to think of everything as having gone to idiocracy, nobody has an attention span anymore or cares about shit that didn’t get invented this morning during breakfast. But here is the Cinerama – a huge theater with a balcony – completely sold out for a showing of a long ass 50 year old movie, not only on film but on an old type of film that was never the standard. Nice to see LAWRENCE getting that kind of love, and on a Friday night no less. There might still be some life in re-releases and revivals. If it’s done right it can work.

Also the music is good in my opinion. They should bring back overtures. I dig a good overture.

chapter 4

released May 25th, 2001

WARNING: contains spoilers for PEARL HARBOR and World War II

After three financially successful action movies in a row (BAD BOYS, THE ROCK, ARMAGEDDON), Michael Bay got a once-in-his-career itch to make An Important Movie. He probly had SAVING PRIVATE RYAN on the brain, and definitely TITANIC.

Ever since James Cameron’s movie broke all box office records studios had been threatening to make asses of themselves by blatantly trying to catch more lightning in that same melodramatic-love-story-during-historic-disaster bottle. Jan de Bont almost did a love-story-on-the-Hindenburg movie, for example. PEARL HARBOR wasn’t as obvious of a copycat as that because 1) it was a love story set against a war movie as much as a disaster and 2) the love song on the end credits was by Faith Hill instead of Celine Dion. Totally different.

Ben Affleck plays Rafe, a functionally illiterate pilot; Josh Hartnett plays Danny, his best friend since childhood and fellow pilot; Kate Beckinsale plays Evelyn, the nurse that Rafe falls in love with and then immediately abandons to fight with the RAF Eagle Squadron. Of course he crashes his plane, so he’s reported dead, Danny has to tell Evelyn the bad news, they spend some time together, a few months later they’re making beautifully-lit, camera-rotating love in the parachute hangar.

I mean obviously they have really conflicted feelings about this, they both feel guilty but also they really love each other and maybe it’s Danny’s duty to give his best friend’s girl the happiest life she can have after this tragedy. But they both resist and take time but it just kind of happens, and who is to say this is not what was meant to happen? Maybe a tragedy has opened the window for a small miracle. In fact, Evelyn has been vomiting in the morning.

So wouldn’t you know it turns out Rafe is still alive, and when he gets back he doesn’t take kindly to the new arrangement. This could get complicated. The truth is that nobody really is wrong or right here, they all just reacted honestly to their understanding of events and unfortunately what should be good news has opened up rifts in a life-long friendship and two love affairs, and covered them in layers of guilt, envy and resentment. Oh yeah, also there’s a subplot about how military intelligence (Dan Aykroyd) is noticing alot of odd data but not in time to figure out that the Japanese (Mako, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) are planning and executing the attack on Pearl Harbor that took 2,350 lives and pulled the U.S. into WWII.

It follows the typical war movie formula. You got the young naive individuals and the reasons why they get into it, how they have fun together getting into mischief, going to the social events, falling for the girls. But meanwhile shit is getting real. Even if they knew it somewhere in their heads they didn’t fully comprehend that the war would happen and that they’d be there. And like any movie we follow this group of friends as they go through it all together. What’s not 100% believable in my opinion is that this group of friends all stays intact. This clique of soldiers are all together with a matching clique of nurses and when the day that still lives in infamy happens they get in a car together and drive to an airfield where they can find shotguns and planes to fight off the third wave.

Ewan Bremner plays a stuttering soldier from their group of friends. Instead of redoing his performance from JULIEN DONKEY-BOY he does it more like “Simple Jack” from TROPIC THUNDER. In the point-of-view of this movie one of the great tragedies of WWII is that a retarded guy landed a super-hot wife but then she got killed.

For racial diversity or something Cuba Gooding Jr. has a brief guest appearance as Dorie Miller, in real life the cook who performed bravely during the attack and therefore became the first black man awarded the Navy Cross. He’s introduced a good way into the movie in a boxing match against the guy who would play Leatherface in the shitty remake of THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE if such a movie were to exist, which fortunately it does not, never did and never will. This scene has a weird feel because we see pretty much all the whites rooting for the white guy and all the blacks rooting for the black guy but going by the dialogue there’s no racial component to this at all, it’s because the sailors and cooks have animosity toward each other.

After the fight Dorie goes to be nursed by Evelyn, and luckily they have time to go for a quiet walk together so Dorie can tell her his life story and how sad he is that he signed up for his country and hasn’t even been allowed to fire a gun.

Finally we see him during the attack and he’s able to man a gun, shoot down a plane and yell a whole bunch. (in real life there’s no evidence he shot down a plane. Not sure if the yelling can be verified either.)

Obviously I skipped this at the time, but reading up on it it’s clear that it didn’t go over well. Alot of people seemed to agree there was something shitty about making a movie like this out of this particular historical event. It does so much to simplify, glamourize and sensationalize an event that is pretty sacred to Americans (and I’m sure Japanese) because of the huge ramifications it had for human lives, for our countries, for history. I know I found it ridiculously tacky when I saw Michael Bay go on the MTV Movie Awards and accept his popcorn shaped “Best Action Sequence” prize. That put “Japanese attack scene” in the books next to “Motorcycle chase” from M:I 2, “Truck drives through farm equipment” from TWISTER and “Mel Gibson’s motorcycle crash” from LETHAL WEAPON 3.

But I gotta admit, if it’s at all possible to set aside that huge matter of taste, PEARL HARBOR is technically better than most of the other Michael Bay movies, for two main reasons:

1. Not as much bad comedy, although there’s one wacky dog reaction shot in Alec Baldwin’s office at the beginning

2. The action scenes are pretty well staged for the most part

The whole thing is beautifully shot. I bet the clouds didn’t look quite that gorgeous during the real attack, but the vivid look of the movie makes it kind of feel like you’re really there. There are some excellent special effects, because most of them don’t look like special effects. I even think the show-offy stuff like following a bomb as it drops on a ship work pretty well. I think some people took exception to it, like it was making a rollercoaster ride out of the deaths of real people. True, but in a smarter movie it could probly work as an audacious way to shove your face into the horror of what’s going on.

This is the Bay movie that seems the most like an AT&T commercial. He delights in creating idyllic scenes to be interupted by the surreal sight of Japanese bombers. A little league kid’s baseball game, a woman hanging up her laundry, an astronaut eating a slice of applie pie off of a Bible.

In fairness to Bay, it should be noted that the battle is scored with TITANIC-y sad music, acknowledging that this is a horrible tragedy unfolding and not an awesome, award worthy action sequence like “Bus escape/Airplane explosion” from SPEED or “L.A. freeway scene” from T2. At one point I was thinking it was trying to be “TITANIC with flags,” and then sure enough there was a shot from underwater with a crowd of shipwreck victims struggling to stay afloat and an American flag floating in the middle of them. It really does look like a shot lifted from TITANIC with digitally added flag. My heart will go on, like a proud eagle.

The attack scenes are upsetting, even in the non-gory PG-13 version I watched. Seeing all the nurses running like hell and getting shot at is brutal. But it would be nice if everything that came before wasn’t so laughable. It has lines like “I’m not anxious to die, sir. Just anxious to matter!” And “We thought you were dead, Rafe, and it gutted us both.” I mean I kinda like Josh Hartnett, but there’s a limit to what he can pull off verbally, and it stops before “it gutted us both.”

If there was some depth to this thing it would be praise-worthy that it follows the nurses a little bit. That’s not a story we’ve seen in much detail, or at least I haven’t. They spend the whole movie being pretty and then during the attack they use their lipstick to mark patients and their nylons to tie tourniquettes. Nice symbolism, but it would be better if they got characterization instead, or also.

The silliest thing about the movie in my opinion is the convenient way the love triangle works out. She falls in love with Rafe, then with Danny when she thinks Rafe is dead, then Danny really does die, so she gets to go back to Rafe, but with Danny’s child. The best of both worlds, no tough decisions required. (But maybe if there’s a part 2 it’ll turn out Danny’s alive and he’ll come back and the tables will re-turn.)

I have to say I was thankful to watch it on DVD and be able to take some breaks. At one point I was checking the timer on the player to see how much was left, I thought “Oh, this isn’t really that long, I’m not sure what everybody was complaining about.” Then at some point I realized there wasn’t enough time left for the end credits to fit. Sure enough I had fallen for the old “insert disc 2″ deal. Then there was another hour left.

For the purposes of this study (and my own sanity) I watched the theatrical version. But then my buddy convinced me I had to listen to Bay’s commentary track on the director’s cut. Bay starts out very serious because he was recording it “250 hours after” 9-11, but he almost immediately jumps into complaining about the “tight budget” he had to work on. It was greenlit at $135, the highest ever intentionally approved by a studio at that time, but Bay thinks that wasn’t enough money for the subject matter. To be fair it is true that nobody had ever made a movie about World War II, the Ten Commandments or even Cleopatra.

In conversation with his proud Wesleyan professor Jeanine Basinger, Bay also brags about singling out a kid in front of 500 other extras and chewing him out for screwing up a shot. He doesn’t tell the story like it’s funny or awkward, but like it’s something that we’ll be really impressed by. Good job millionaire director of Victoria’s Secret commercials. You really showed that kid who couldn’t keep a straight face in the background of your universally despised movie. I hope you made him cry.

* * *

Of all the movies that came out in the summer of 2001 this is the one where coming out shortly before 9-11 is most significant. Shortly after the World Trade Center was attacked a Pearl Harbor (the historical event, not the movie) comparison started to get thrown around very liberally in the media. Pearl Harbor was considered the last attack on American soil (previous terrorist attacks didn’t count) and both the conventional wisdom and the propaganda had it that 9-11 was the wake up call to pull America into a world war.

The movie shows Americans attacked, killed, wounded, running for cover. It shows the attempts to interpret data about an attack but failing to predict or prepare properly. It shows care free young people suddenly transformed and wanting to be sent off to war to get revenge or make things right. When PEARL HARBOR (the movie this time) came out it was trying to introduce these concepts to young people, but they’d all become familiar again a few months later.

I can’t help but wonder if this exact movie had come out one summer later if it would’ve been a massive hit. Of course then it would seem like shameless knee-jerk propaganda, but the country’s mood at the time might’ve led us to pay less attention to the characters, acting, etc. and more to the flags and the heroism. Around that time the miniature flags attached to every pickup truck in the country were beginning to rot, but they were still waving. People might’ve been inspired by the closing narration: “America suffered, but America grew stronger. It was not inevitable. The times tried our souls… and through the trial, we overcame.”

But maybe not. 2002 was a summer of fantasy and escape. Affleck actually starred in THE SUM OF ALL FEARS, a Tom Clancy terrorism thriller, and that did pretty good but was overshadowed by SPIDER-MAN and ATTACK OF THE CLONES. And coincidentally (since it was filmed before 9-11) they had changed it from the Tom Clancy book so the terrorists weren’t Arabs anymore.

People enjoy Indiana Jones melting greedy Nazis, or Brad Pitt blowing up Hitler. Enough time has passed that you might even be able to do some kind of fictionalized thriller tying into the real historical events of the attack on Pearl Harbor. But Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer making old timey TOP GUN and then presenting it as a representation of the real event… that’s not gonna go over well. So no, maybe there wasn’t a good time for PEARL HARBOR to come out. No matter when they did it it still would’ve been fucking PEARL HARBOR.

* * *

legacy: Like almost all of Michael Bay’s movies it made some money, but if Bay was looking for respect he’s gonna have to keep snooping around for it. It has 27% on Rotten Tomatoes and its biggest mark on pop culture was in the song in TEAM AMERICA that compares the strength of a character’s love to the suckiness of PEARL HARBOR. Bay hasn’t tried for respectability since.

This was somewhere in the middle of Affleck’s process of burning through the public’s good will toward him as an actor (it was a couple years after PHANTOMS and a couple before GIGLI) but he has since become a respectable director.

datedness: Being a period piece and being well executed visually it doesn’t seem dated to 2001 at all.

2001-2011 connections: Ten summers ago Bay tried to graduate to more mature material. This summer he’s doing his third toy adaptation in a row (and in 3D this time). That’s probly a better idea for him.

But the curse can be broken. Six years and no theatrical releases later John Woo returned home, filming a Chinese movie for the first time in 17 years, and what he came up with was a motherfucking masterpiece. The damn thing is so powerful somebody tried to chop it in half and it just grew into two complete movies. Whoever did it I bet they just ran away because they knew if they chopped those in half you’d have four RED CLIFFS and they would conquer the earth, guaranteed.

These came out in ‘08 and ‘09, so there’s been plenty of time to watch them. But some of you guys probly haven’t seen ‘em, and can relate to me on this: I was intimidated. I mean I heard alot of good things, but you know, it’s a Chinese historical epic, and it’s 2 hours and 20 minutes just to get to the halfway mark. It’s one of those things you want to do, you plan to do, but you rarely feel like doing it. Like working at a soup kitchen. But then I watched those BETTER TOMORROW movies again and I promised a return to the Woo Zone and I decided it was time to bite the bullet. Or I guess in this case the arrow, there aren’t guns in this one. Maybe that’s all Woo had to do to reinvigorate himself, switch up the projectiles.

I gotta tell you, it was tough going at first. This is a movie based on very famous Chinese history and legends, stories and characters that Chinese audiences are familiar with, that you and I never fuckin heard of. And there are a couple different factions and a whole bunch of different characters and although they do a good job of distinguishing them from each other visually I wasn’t able to remember which name was which face, so then when they’re talking about each other I don’t know who they mean and I get kind of lost.

So about an hour into the movie I was thinking okay, this looks beautiful and has some really cool scenes and stuff but I don’t think I’m gonna be able to get through this whole thing yet. I’ll just struggle through part 1, return it and rent it again for part 2 some other time.

But then the battles started, the crazy fuckin battles. I don’t know how much this is supposed to be based on real shit, but it seems even more exaggerated than 300, and with a bigger scope. The first big battle is like an endless parade of inventive action. Remember the phalanx in 300, where they hold their shields together to form kind of a metal wall? In RED CLIFF they do it in tortoise formation, a giant circle of interlocked shields, and at one point the camera actually pulls back as the phalanx morphs into a giant tortoise. They use their shields to block opposing soldiers inside one big metal corridor, then joust them. They trap them inside a big circle, toss in a bunch of nooses and drag them out of the circle so they can spear them. You know – the ol’ noose ‘n stab. When the bad guys form a little tortoise themselves the good guys loop around them with a rope with metal things strung onto it and just crush the whole fuckin turtle shell. Squoosh. Super Mario formation.

By the time part 1 ended I was on much more comfortable footing, I felt like I mostly understood who was who and what was going on and I abandoned plan A (return DVD to store without watching part 2) for plan B (immediately put in disc 2 and find out what happens because this shit is awesome). And part 2 begins with a little “previously on RED CLIFF” type recap that makes it all seem so simple, I wondered what I was so confused about.

But you won’t even have the same trouble because I want you to see this movie so bad that at the end of this review I prepared the visual guide I wish I had had to help me understand who was who during that first hour. You know how at an opera they give you a thing that tells what the story is, and you’re familiar with that before you watch the opera? Yeah, me neither, but I think I read that somewhere. Anyway, if you’re intimidated just use my cheat-sheet below and you’ll be fine.

* * *

I’m pretty sure RED CLIFF is the HUGEST fucking movie John Woo will ever make, but he’s still John Woo, so he spends alot of time focusing on the small and intimate things too. That’s the visual theme I noticed most: zooming in on small things while GIGANTIC things are happening in the background. The opening scene is all about the Emperor focusing his attention on a bird in his throne room, while he’s clearly ignoring the drums of war. The drums are metaphorical, the bird is literal, and he sits and whistles and smiles at this little bird that flew into his huge throne room while his entourage seems embarrassed and uncomfortable. The Emperor is very feminine and gussied up like Queen Amidala from the Star Warses, and his gruff war hero chancellor Cao Cao stomps in ahead of his troops and yells at him and guilts him into letting him go start some war. You can tell the Emperor doesn’t want the responsibility of knowing the right way to handle this guy. He’d rather be playing with the bird.

That type of imagery keeps coming back, for example when Zhou Yu holds up his feather-fan to compare to his troops standing in “goose formation.” The story focuses on this group of leaders and strategists in the middle of giant armies, it’s about the tiny within the huge. And the shot at the end of part 1 demonstrates this the most: it’s an incredible 2 1/2 minute continuous (heavily digital but very real looking) shot that follows a messenger pigeon flying from Red Cliff, across the river, over entire armadas, down to the river bank over the armies on horseback, through a stadium where a soccer-like game called cuju is being played, and then Cao Cao says that “for the Battle of Red Cliff I am ready…” It’s an awe-inspiring shot (apparently one of the most expensive CGI shots to date) that’s a metaphor for the whole movie, a map of the locations for part 2 and a heart-pounding Oh Shit It’s On cliffhanger… all at the same time.

(if anybody ever ends a part 1 out of 2 in a similar fashion again it will be called a redcliffhanger)

Another way that John Woo gets intimate is with the badass juxtaposition. And there are alot of badass characters in this movie so there might be a world record amount of badass juxtaposition. We got the guy whose wing-fan “keeps him calm.” We got warriors who bond by jamming together (I wrote down that the instrument is called a “quim,” but the internet doesn’t seem to back me up on that). We got a guy who weaves sandals (both a calming hobby and a symbol of weak grass working together to become strong). We got a guy who takes care of the messenger pigeons and carefully bathes them.

There’s a long section of the movie where my man Zhuge Liang first helps out a peasant whose water buffalo was stolen by soldiers, then somebody runs in yelling “It’s a breech birth!” and next thing you know he’s helping deliver a baby horse! He names it Meng Meng and has to promise it won’t be used as a war horse. There should be an animated spin-off about the Young Meng Meng Adventures.

There is talk about tea ceremonies. In Part 2 they say that Cao Cao wouldn’t appreciate the art of tea, and sure enough he gets a chance to show he’s not that interested. On the other hand he is into poetry. It’s partly in an aggressive way (”I am still waiting to carve my poetry onto that cliff!”) but also he uses it ceremonially, like he recites poetry while they burn the bodies of plague victims.

But in order for there to be badass juxtaposition there has to be a proportionate amount of badass. Otherwise you just got a lime wedge or a maraschino cherry in a big empty glass. Some of these epic battle movies bore the shit out of me because they’re just a crowd of dirty dudes yelling and running at each other with swords, they don’t got enough moves to keep my interest. Not RED CLIFF. This is part 1, only the preliminary battles, but it still tears through a long list of clever war maneuvers and superhuman asskicking techniques. There’s stabbing a guy with an arrow by hand, there’s yanking a guy off a horse by the flag, there’s the scene where they flip their shields around to reveal reflectors that shine sun into the eyes of the horses and make them all crumble to the ground, there’s FONG SAI YUK type overhead crowd walking, all kinds of shit. In a coincidental tribute to the most iconic image in HARD BOILED, there’s a scene where a guy carries a baby through a massive sword battle. In part 2 there’s another John Woo staple: a Mexican standoff. But with swords. A Han Dynasty standoff, I guess.

Let me give you one small example of the level of awesomeness in this movie, courtesy of Zhang Fei. This guy doesn’t even need a weapon, he can run through a platoon of armed men, beat the shit out of them, ruin their weapons, and ram a horse:

One of the top uses of horse-ramming in modern cinema. And that’s not even the end of the scene. After that he steals the horse and takes his side’s flag back.

Once I got into the Woo Zone RED CLIFF was the most exciting movie I’d seen in a long god damn time. To me it was a similar feeling to watching the LORD OF THE RINGSes. It’s every bit as cool without even the aid of monsters or wizardy magic of any kind. Of course it reminds me of other movies with armies and epic battles and martial arts and swarms of arrows, like HERO. But it also kept reminding me of STAR WARS. Well, mostly the prequel ones, but bear with me here. The heroes of this movie are just like the Jedis, larger-than-life warriors running around leading these huge battles, knowing all the crazy moves, putting themselves on the line, also wearing robes and using swords. And I know it’s based on actual history but I was still impressed by the wide selection of vehicles, weapons, armor style, etc. There’s alot of nice things to look at.

Part 2 doesn’t immediately launch into battle like I kind of expected, but by this time I was really into the characters so I was kind of glad it didn’t. In this part Sun Quan’s sister Sun Shangxiang, having convinced all the dudes that it is okay for a woman to go out and do shit, goes undercover as a soldier on the other side of the river. In her armor she passes for a guy, MULAN style, and turns out to be real good at cuju. She makes friends with a moronic prince, they even have a nickname for themselves together Pit and Piggy. But she’s not really fat enough to be called Piggy, she just looks fat because she’s wrapped in the detailed maps she’s drawing of all their side’s military formations. She’s taking advantage of his stupidity and willingness to help her, but she obviously likes him and feels that old bonding and guilt familiar from most John Woo movies and all undercover agent movies.

There’s other unexpected friendship and betrayal going on. There’s a guy from Cao Cao’s side allowed to visit the Red Cliffers because he was childhood friends with one of them, he tries to convince them to surrender and instead they send him home with false information. But they feel bad about it, even though he tried to screw them. “I have lost an old friend.”

Part 2 is alot of fun because it’s so full of clever strategy and tricks. Stuff like predicting the other side’s plan based on what they think the weather will be, and defeating that stategy based on superior knowledge of weather prediction. Inventing firebombs made of eggshells, fish oil and gun powder. My favorite part, maybe old hat for Chinese people but I never heard of this one, is the part about Zhuge Liang’s promise to get 100,000 arrows. He has a really clever way of getting the arrows, and when a miscount makes it seem like he’s a mere 400 short of the 100,000 he’s fully prepared to honor his bargain, i.e. let them chop off his head. They get pretty fuckin close. Would’ve been a mistake. Glad they didn’t fuck that one up.

Cao Cao has some good moves too, like when his men start getting Typhoid fever so he floats their corpses over to the other side. Pretty fuckin harsh. Hey, could you guys take care of these bodies? He’s shown not to be 100% evil though, too. He feeds a sick man, and talks to him about his son. He has a heart. In fact, that might be his biggest weakness. When his guys figure out that the war has something to do with him having an old crush on a girl they seem pretty pissed.

There it is again, the small and intimate inside the huge and epic. And it’s kind of the point. All this war, all this death, all this heroism and sacrifice, all this cunning and bravery, all because some stupid asshole saw a pretty girl one time and missed his window and never forgot about it. If it happened to most people it would just be an embarrassing thing they might get over with help from their therapist. But this guy is in a position to start wars over it. In his mind I’m sure he convinces himself that it’s not really about that, it’s these two warlords, they gotta be stopped! But if there was no girl involved, let’s be honest, he would’ve thought of something else to do with his time I bet. And we’ve loved watching these warriors and all the cool things they do, but we realize they’re not really fighting for a cause. They’re just fighting against some bullshit.

They shouldn’t even be put in that position. They should be left alone to play music and cuju and make sandals and shit. Cao Cao could come over and say his poetry at their jam session, and learn more about tea if he wants to. And then the pigeon guy could talk to the Emperor about birds, and Zhuge Liang could become a veterinarian. These guys all ought to be friends.

It started with a bird and it ends with a horse, returning to Meng Meng. He’s able to just be a horse, not a war horse. And hopefully all the humans were able to go on living without having to be war humans.

Even if this movie weren’t as great as it is it would be satisfying just to see John Woo get a chance to spend this kind of money to put this type of hugeness on screen. I mean, it’s not even his biggest budget – according to IMDb’s estimates it cost $80 million, about $45 million less than MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE II. But if you were just gonna go by what appears on screen, RED CLIFF looks like about 75 times the budget of that one. As hard of a time as he has working in Hollywood there’s no way this one was easy, with all these gigantic scenes, whether working with hundreds of extras or faking it in computers, it all must’ve been a nightmare. Not even including all that stuff about how they were having to rewrite the script and Chow Yun Fat backed out at the last minute and all that. This is a once in a lifetime movie by a genius director somehow climbing back to the top of his game years after everybody gave up on him ever making a halfway decent movie again.

It just goes to show you shouldn’t completely give up on anybody. In the movie there’s a point where Lui Bei feels he has to back out for the good of his people, and everybody is bummed but they understand and say their goodbyes. But then he shows up again when he’s most needed, with a “you didn’t really think I would abandon you?” type of attitude. And that’s just what John Woo has done to us. Ladies and gentlemen, John Woo was back. I’m not gonna say he is back because if I were him I would go take a nap for about 20 years.

Clip and save my unofficial RED CLIFF VISUAL GUIDE!

Disclaimer: Contains spoilers. Might be hard to follow along with while watching movie.  Outlawvern.com not responsible for damage to computer monitors caused by overly literal interpretations of instructions

Loosely based on Disneyland’s Skyway and Matterhorn rides, WHERE EAGLES DARE is the story of a team of British commandos (Richard Burton, others) and one American (Clint) sent on a mission to infiltrate the Nazi-infested castle and rescue a captured general before he’s enhanced-interrogationed into giving up the Allied war plans or something. So they have to skydive, go on a snow trek, mountain climb, sneak in wearing Nazi uniforms, fit in, drink German beer (which Clint was against in THE ROOKIE, saying it has no aftertaste), and all kinds of dangerous shit.

Burton is the man with the plan. He does most of the talking and instructing. He also has two (2) hot mamas he meets up with, one (Mary Ure) already a bar maid in the castle, the other (Ingrid Pitt) pretending to be the fake bar maid’s cousin. He’s sneaking around behind the others’ back and could be a traitor himself, you never know. Or just a lady’s man.

There’s a whole lot of intrigue in this thing: An Aryan douchebag who seems dangerously close to discovering the plot. Word of a mole somewhere in MI-6. A long, convoluted monologue explaining who’s really who and what they’re up to. But there’s also a ton of action: ski lift stunts, shootouts, bombings, truck crashes, a bus with a snow shovel on the front. While it takes its sweet British time getting there it eventually gets to an epic series of uninterrupted action sequences. What makes it so awesome is the quiet, confident professionalism of these characters. When Burton blurts out an instruction they know exactly how to do it, they don’t gotta ask questions. More often than that he doesn’t even have to say anything. They know exactly what to do without having to tell each other with more than a glance or a nod. When it comes time to quit ducking bullets in the bus, stand up and shoot back they do it without hesitation, without flinching, without showing much emotion. And this includes the women. Equality, man.

(The irony of movies using women to do more than stand around looking hot is that it makes them way hotter. I mean, look at this:

Don’t you think?)

During the truck chase they just get out, set up bombs, keep going, blow up the bridge behind them. Like clockwork. It reminds me of a heist movie, a carefully rehearsed plan. They know exactly what to do.

Watching this now you definitely gotta notice the influence on INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS. Not just the drinking and trying not to seem phony in their shitbag uniforms, not just the unflinching assassination of any S.S. fucker that gets in their way, but even the expository mission briefing scene that seems awfully similar to the Mike Meyers one in BASTERDS. Of course, Tarantino cites this movie as what he was trying not to do by having all his characters speak their own languages. EAGLES uses the more common and less Mel-Gibson-approved method of just having everybody speak English, and doesn’t even bother with the commonly accepted rule German-accented-English = German. This is the movie’s one big weakness.

I don’t care about the lack of realism. This is imagination and fun. But I have to admit I got a little lost during the crucial scene where Burton lays out his scheme to a table full of guys in Nazi uniforms. Since the movie doesn’t really spend much time developing the other team members besides Burton and Eastwood and since they’re all wearing Nazi uniforms and since they all talk the same I had a hard time remembering who was real Nazis and who was fake ones. Especially since one of them is now claiming to be a fake fake Nazi. So that was a problem, but I got past it.

Clint’s part is pretty different from usual because he’s kind of the sidekick or supporting badass. But he’s one of those supporting characters who seems very present in the scenes even though somebody else is talking. You always wonder what he’s thinking, except when you can clearly tell what he’s thinking. You see him skeptical of Burton, but playing along, or waiting patiently to see where this is going. He’s kind of an American ideal (stoic, cynical, bomb expert) teamed with Burton as more of a British ideal (articulate mastermind) as a tribute to all the great things the British and Americans have done together over the years such as Monty Python, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and the publication of Seagalogy.

The script is by the novelist Alistair MacLean (THE GUNS OF NAVARONE), not as an adaptation of a novel but as a movie-book-combo in the tradition of such cinemaliteratical works as 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and MR. MAJESTYK. The whole thing is a really well put together production, a real epic feel with a great Indiana-Jones-exciting score by Ron Goodwin and snowy locations nicely shot by Arthur Ibbetson. The director was Brian G. Hutton, whose KELLY’S HEROES is also coming up on my list of Clint movies to review. But it sounds like alot of the credit for this one has to go to an individual by the excellent handle of Yakima Canutt, who was a stuntman and occasional director going back to the silent film days. Here he was second unit director so he shot most of the action scenes (something he also did for BEN-HUR and SPARTACUS.)

As a Clint-centric viewer I gotta admit I don’t place this as high on the list as most of you guys seem to. It’s much more of a European thriller sensibility than the American grittiness I appreciate him for. But it’s a real enjoyable movie of its type that uses him well for extra flavor. It has some satisfying twists, is well structured to keep getting more exciting as it goes along and definitely has some of the best action sequences of its era. But again, there are not any birds in it, so the title doesn’t make any sense.

Oh wait, that’s a metaphor I bet. Good job, brave eagles. May your wings fly and then you kill other more hateful birds with courageous talons of justice, or whatever.

[ratings]

The director is Antoine Fuqua (REPLACEMENT KILLERS and TRAINING DAY), trying for the admirable goal of an action movie that’s Important. He means well, but I don’t think he quite pulls it off. For his part, on the other hand, Bruce does pull it off. He’s a grim, no nonsense professional, not trying to be an asshole, but doesn’t waste time being friendly. At first this seems like a waste of Bruce because he never gets to use his wiseass powers. He shows a sense of humor exactly 1 (one) time in the movie when he wakes up in the jungle and asks, “Are we there yet?”

(SPOILER: they are not there yet. That’s why it’s funny.)

He’s mostly the lieutenant party pooper. No, we can’t rescue everybody. No, you can’t bring all your stuff. I know you just sat down but we gotta keep moving. You gotta shut that baby up or we will all be executed by rebels, etc. Just generally heroically bumming everybody out all the time.

But it’s okay because Brooding Bruce gives a real good performance that elevates the movie a couple notches and somewhat won me over as the tension started to mount in the last section.

For a while it diddles around, though. Bruce and his team are only assigned to rescue the doctor lady, and they tell her they cannot and will not rescue anyone else. But when she refuses to go without her people Bruce says fine and brings everybody along.

When they get to the rendezvous point with the choppers it’s obvious that there’s not room for everybody. Sorry lady, you been Punk’d, they drag her onto the copter and leave everybody behind.

But then, like a minute later, they fly over the burning, body-strewn mission (like Luke Skywalker returning to his aunt and uncle’s in Star Wars Part 1: Star Wars Episode 4), and Bruce makes the decision to turn it back around, put children and elderly on the copters and lead everybody else to safety on foot. It’s a major character turning point, but it doesn’t have that much wallop because I thought he already made that change back at the beginning when he pretended to agree to save everyone. See, I think they shortchanged the drama there because there’s only a brief period where it’s “just kidding, I didn’t change the mission, actually I’m sticking with the original mission” before a quick turnaround to “okay, I will change the mission after all, this time for serious guys trust me.”

Then, after they’ve turned the copters around, flown back, put some refugees on board and started marching the others toward Cameroon, only then does one of his guys ask him what he’s doing. Like he couldn’t have put context clues together to solve that mystery. Or asked him back on the helicopter.

I like his team, though. They have minimal development even though they got Cole PITCH BLACK Hauser, Nick CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK Chinlund, Johnny SPARTAN Messner and Eamonn BLOOD AND BONE Walker among them. But they look very credible and Predator-ready. In the best and most tense action sequence they demonstrate their elite-teamwork when they come across a rebel massacre of civilians from a distance. At first it seems like they’re just gonna watch, it’s not their fight. But they decide to engage, the snipers start taking out the rebels and Bruce and others move in close to finish the rest of them.

The most enjoyable thing about the movie is the team’s sense of loyalty to Bruce. There’s no whining or arguing to force dramatic conflict. If they disagree with him they still do what he says, not just out of a soldier’s duty I think, but out of respect for him. My favorite scene is when Bruce decides he’s gonna violate Tom Skerritt’s order and try to save the people. He goes around and has each soldier say what he thinks. A real nice bonding moment where everybody’s on the same page and willing to risk their lives and then instead of being all macho about it Bruce quietly says, “Thanks fellas.”

Unfortunately, most of the 90 minutes before that don’t have the same kind of momentum. I suspect a huge part of that is the score by Hans Zimmer, an uncharacteristically mellow lament that pretty much stays at the same pitch no matter what’s happening, occasionally exotic-ing shit up with African vocals, like that style they made fun of a little in TROPIC THUNDER. I’m not saying bang us over the head, but this movie never acts like there’s any suspense to be had, it’s just like “hey everybody, isn’t this sad? donate now.” I mean in retrospect maybe Fuqua isn’t trying to make an action movie that’s Important, maybe he’s just going for straight Important, no action. I honestly think a bombastic score like INVASION USA would make the movie work alot better. But maybe it would give away that this ain’t Oscar bait.

Here’s how to prove that it’s actually some unholy combination of action movie and Oscar bait. If it was the first one, it would take place in some fictional African country called like Togeria or Ghanobo or Zambibwe. If it was the second it would be a fictionalized story based on an actual historical incident, a massacre or at least a coup d’etat that really happened. Instead it takes place in the actual country of Nigeria but with a made up civil war.

Apparently some critics were bothered by the unhistoricalness of it, but one complaint they probly let slide was the traditional “this is racist because it’s about Africans but focuses almost entirely on the handful of white people who are also there.” That’s a pretty common and frustrating Hollywood approach, but the one reason this is different is because Fuqua is black. I think that’s kind of interesting actually because it says that maybe these types of stories are not so much a racial tendency as a cultural one. He’s African American but that doesn’t mean he relates to the Africans as much as the Americans, even though he tries. I guess it’s kind of like Walker in the movie – some of the Africans try to talk to him about his ancestry, and he has no idea. It’s just not a part of most people’s lives.

I’m not sure what the title means, if anything. I don’t think it’s the same as Tears of a Clown. I believe it was originally the title of some jungle action movie that John Woo was gonna direct. Then that script I think got re-written into what they then thought was gonna be DIE HARD 4. But they couldn’t figure out how McClane would get through the jungle barefooted so they scrapped that and Bruce said, “Hey, do you mind if I take a few things that were left over, such as the title?” and they were like “Yeah sure, it’s just gonna sit in storage collecting dust anyway, and also who knows what the fuck it means, I would never use that title” and he said “It probly means diamonds or something, I don’t know” and they said “I don’t care, just take the fuckin thing.”

The movie ends with the famous quote “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”. So you know it’s supposed to be a plea for American military intervention in these types of conflicts. I don’t know, man. In a situation like this made up Hollywood one, where a small team of elite soldiers can save the lives of a whole bunch of innocents, of course I would be for it. Unfortunately, even Bruce’s fictional team are not able to stop the made up civil war, they can only help maintain hope for democracy and freedom and what not in the future. Which actually means the dictator will keep fighting the prince and more people will die.

I wish there was as easy of an answer as “We have to do something!” but unfortunately nobody really knows what the something is that’s gonna definitely make shit better and not make it worse.

But I guess if you take it in more general terms and not just as a story about the military, then it’s a little easier to take. It just says that you should follow your conscience, even if your training and your occupation tells you to do otherwise. You should have sympathy for people and if there’s something you can do to help them, even if it’s at a sacrifice to yourself, you should think about doing it. That’s what Bruce would do.

[ratings]

THE NEXT MISSION was made for TV in 1985. It’s supposed to take place about 6 months later, but Lee Marvin has aged 18 years. Somehow they got Marvin, Borgnine and Richard Jaeckel all to come back. They have a new mission with a new Dirty Dozen including Ken Wahl and Sonny Landham.

Alot of the movie, especially the first half hour or so, just made me sad. Marvin’s age is really showing (this was his next to last movie) and he just doesn’t seem like he’s into it at all. They make poor Lee and Ernest rehash the whole Borgnine-pitching-the-mission sequence and the Marvin-recruiting-the-convicts one and they even use whole chunks and paragraphs of the exact same dialogue as in the original. Then Marvin will say things like, “That sounds familiar.”

This was 1985, when plenty of people had VCRs, but I guess maybe they still figured you hadn’t seen THE DIRTY DOZEN in a long time, and by exactly redoing it but with worse acting and camerawork they would make you would think “ah, what a pleasant reminder of yesteryear!” But if you watch the two back-to-back like I did I’m pretty sure you’ll agree that there’s nothing pleasant about it.

Also there’s a part where they re-use an 18 year old shot of Marvin driving up to a building. It’s so obviously not from the same film stock it kind of reminds me of on a sitcom when they cut to an exterior shot of a city to pretend this isn’t all shot on video on a stage in front of an audience. Come on man, that footage is old enough to vote. Just rent a fuckin jeep and re-do it.

THE NEXT MISSION is maybe an hour shorter than THE PREVIOUS MISSION, so they skip over the rivalry and war games and go straight to the mission, which involves the takeover of a train and the shooting of a Nazi general who might be planning to assassinate Hitler. Once it gets more into the specific preparations and the mission itself it becomes more enjoyable because it’s not exactly the same as before, and that’s probaly why Marvin starts to get more lively and enthused. He does the numbering and rhyming for all the stages of his plan like in part 1, but otherwise it’s semi-new material. For example it introduces the idea of him getting the Dozen’s cooperation by telling them there’s gold on the train. I’m not sure what book or movie started that one. They used it in NAM ANGELS though.

The big moment is when the sniper gets the target in his sights, but Hitler is there too so he’s tempted to kill him instead. Lee Marvin has to talk him out of it. That’s a dilemma usually reserved for time travelers who have the chance to stop the Holocaust but don’t want to fuck up the future in some unforeseen butterfly effect type of way, like there was no WWII but super-intelligent Yetis now control all of Asia and Europe or that kind of thing. This has nothing to do with that. The thinking, as explained by Borgnine during a golf game, is that Hitler’s incompetence will end the war soon, but if he dies now this general would take command and the war would stretch on for years. And I mean how many more dozens is Lee Marvin gonna want to train?  Shit, just one year and he’ll be 99 years old at the rate he’s aging. This war needs over with.

Landham doesn’t have much to do, Wahl plays a racist dick, and whoever is playing the Savalas crazy type is a horrible actor. But by the end I was a little more involved in it, so I kind of liked seeing how it ended up. In fact, the highlight of the movie is the very end, when the survivors crash land a stolen Nazi plane, still wearing Nazi uniforms, and an English farmer tries to take them prisoner. Reisman uses his American accent to tell the farmer he’s done a good job, puts his arm around him and heads for the nearest pub to buy him a pint.

Since this was made for TV you could compare it to DTV. They wanted a sequel but not enough to pay for a real one. But actually it was higher profile than DTV because back then there weren’t as many channels, so I’d bet more people saw this than picked up CARLITO’S WAY: RISE TO POWER. I don’t know if this was made because of all the Vietnam-related mission movies of the time. Same year as RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II, but I’d guess it was a coincidence. The director, Andrew V. McLaglen, actually did the men-on-a-mission movie THE DEVIL’S BRIGADE back in ‘68 and THE WILD GEESE in ‘78. He also did that Joe Don Baker movie MITCHELL that the Mystery Science nerds like to make fun of, and after this one he did another TV sequel, RETURN FROM THE RIVER KWAI. The writer, Michael Kane (no relation), wrote SOUTHERN COMFORT. And JAWS 3-D. And SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT II.

The completist in me enjoyed seeing this, but I gotta tell you the quality is somewhere between the original DIRTY DOZEN and the average A-TEAM episode. And it kind of bummed me out to see Marvin getting decrepit. He had grey hair for most (all?) of his acting career, so you always think of him as a capable old guy. Here he’s finally showing his age.

Luckily it’s made for TV so it doesn’t count. On second thought it’s admirably honest to use this as a mere bonus feature, and maybe even good marketing. Remember when they put Cronenberg’s THE FLY on DVD as a double feature with THE FLY II? Good value, but I think people were happy when they later released them separately. They’d rather pay more to not have THE FLY II written on the cover. Same goes for THE NEXT MISSION. Just check the bonus disc if you’re interested.

[ratings]

For the cons it’s a good deal too. They get to go outside. If it’s true they like killing, here’s their chance for more. They get to postpone their executions, or kill some time before their executions. And if they do a good job and survive they might get pardoned, maybe, if fuckin Ernest Borgnine sees it in his heart. If they die in the line of duty, well, maybe they’d rather die that way than on a rope.

Their major is the hated-by-the-brass Reisman (Lee G.D. Marvin). He has to train a crew of fuckups including Jim Brown (not fond of whites), John Cassavetes (adverse to authority), Telly Savalas (rapist who thinks he works for God), Donald Sutherland (young), Trini Lopez (on guitar) and Charles motherfuckin Bronson. If some of them gotta be murderers in order to bring a team like that together then, well, break a few eggs I guess. That’s a good lineup.

There are alot of sections to this movie: first he goes in and talks to them in their cells, convinces them to join. Then he starts training them, and has to get them to form bonds and work together as a unit, which isn’t easy. Then they form a rivalry with another squad and have to humiliate them in war games or their mission will be cancelled and they’ll go back to death row. Then they finally have the mission.

Of course, most of the dozen are sympathetic. Kind of a cheat. Almost all of them had honorable reasons for killing. Only Savalas is really despicable and dangerous. They put him on lookout duty when they have a party with prostitutes, because he can’t be trusted around women. He seems to think of any woman as a whore, who knows what he’s gonna think about an actual whore.

But they’re these scrappy outcasts who disdain authority, discipline and military order. So this is kind of like THE BAD NEWS BEARS as a WWII movie. You laugh as they fuck everything up, then the gruff major/coach who plays by his own rules (PBHOR) slowly whips them into shape. They bond, they have an underdog competition against another team who are so arrogant you want to see them lose bad and run home crying like babies. And the Dozen do beat them, they get to rub it in their faces. And even though the characterization isn’t all that deep you almost feel like you’re on their team too, becoming friends with them.

It’s also kind of like another movie by the same director, Robert Aldrich: THE LONGEST YARD. If you haven’t seen the original pre-Sandler one it’s a real broad comedy where inmates get to play (American) football against the screws. All these movies have an idea that we Americans like to think is very American, but that probaly transcends all cultures: the team of individuals. They’re all rebels who stand alone and PBTOR, but then after they hang around each other long enough they accidentally bond and next thing you know the loners are a team, united in one goal.

They’re also rebels that are part of the system, that’s another way they have their cake and yet also eat their cake. They reject the military and yet are military heroes. The Dirty Dozen are soldiers like Dirty Harry’s a cop.

THE DIRTY DOZEN is a fun movie, it’s not a gloomy war movie, but it also has some parts that were very graphic for the time. I mean, they really massacre those Nazis at the end. It was obviously an influence on Mr. Tarantino’s INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS and a reason why some people might think the Basterds are wimps. They’re all Donald Sutherlands with no Charles Bronsons or Jim Browns. That’s alot to live up to.

I love these types of premises, so I was surprised to learn from the extras that this was inspired by a real thing. It’s based on a book and the author of that book claims it came out of research and stories he heard about an actual group of condemned soldiers sent on a secret mission in WWII. The DVD also talks about some group called “The Filthy 13″ who were so dedicated to the art of war that they didn’t have time for grooming, so that’s where he got that idea.

Wouldn’t it be cool if when they were fighting the Nazis the Nazis kept looking like they were gonna puke and saying, “Holy God what is that smell!?” That’s one thing people tend to forget about the Dirty Dozen. They smell like ass.

Anyway I wouldn’t say this is a masterpiece, but I do consider it a classic, and I think if for some reason you haven’t seen it you should add that to your to-do list.

[ratings]