July 12, 1996
I know why I didn’t watch COURAGE UNDER FIRE in ’96. I was very anti-war, in a country that had generally accepted the Gulf War as a good thing, and I didn’t want to sit through more bullshit about how proud we should all be about it. And also, let’s be honest, I wasn’t exactly looking for Serious Adult Drama unless it was from filmmakers I was already into. I was not into director Ed Zwick (GLORY, LEAVING NORMAL) or writer Patrick Sheane Duncan (84C MOPIC, MR. HOLLAND’S OPUS), so it didn’t really matter that it was shot by Roger Deakins (between FARGO and KUNDUN), edited by Steven Rosenblum (STEELE JUSTICE, BRAVEHEART), with music by James Horner (BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, UNCOMMON VALOR, COMMANDO).
Watching it now, sitting through the opening news montage about the war, it doesn’t feel like we’re supposed to question any of it. Then we go into a tank battle that’s very visually connected to the way we experienced the war on CNN: night skies, burning oil wells, explosions in the distance, cuts to green, pixelated night vision, “enemies” virtually invisible, barely given faces, never voices. And they’re mostly referred to by slurs.
If that was commentary I would guess most viewers didn’t notice. It feels more like a continuation of how the war was seen at the time. However, there is something to be said for Lieutenant Colonel Nat Serling (Denzel Washington between DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS and THE PREACHER’S WIFE) having his troops pray and then immediately saying, Let’s kill ‘em all!”
And I do suspect it’s intentional that the fight is almost uncomfortably one-sided. They’re just driving along firing machine guns through rows and rows of human beings. The only tragedy, in their eyes, is when they mistakenly blow up one of their own tanks, killing their friend Boylar (Tim Ransom, OUTBREAK). The tank operator who fired, Patella (Sean Astin, ENCINO MAN), is racked with guilt, but Serling takes the blame. It was his orders. (read the rest of this shit…)
“I didn’t choose any of this, you know? This chose me.”
But also some people went to see movies. Mostly BASIC INSTINCT, which was still #1 in its seventh week. And a very small number of people must’ve went to see LEAVING NORMAL, a perfectly sweet little comedy-drama about white women. Maybe it wasn’t the best time for it. It was not a big enough release to make it onto the box office charts, and I honestly don’t remember ever hearing of it before researching this series. But if I’m gonna do Weird Summer I better cover a movie about leaving normal.
For some reason it’s hard to make a movie series based on a book series about some dude who has different adventures. Except for James Bond, and Jack Ryan at one point. And it tends to be only screenwriters turned directors who know this sort of thing would be cool: Brian Helgeland did a Parker book (
Back in 2003, when THE LAST SAMURAI was new, I had a cynical, kneejerk reaction to it. “Yeah, right… Tom Cruise is the last samurai? Who’s next, someone from the brand new TV show this year America’s Top Model?” I was offended that they wouldn’t make a movie just about samurai, it had to be about the white guy that meets the samurai.
