War Movies Redux - An

War Movies Redux - An email correspondent sent this:

'Gods and Generals is an awful movie. Not because it doesn't include enough black characters or is too sympathetic to the Southern cause as I've heard some critics claim, it's simply a poorly made film. I don't know who claimed to have edited it but whoever did was sleeping on the job. Forty or fifty minutes could have been cut and you would hardly notice the difference. Would it be a good movie then? No, but at least it wouldn't be so blasted long.

G'nG joins the great tradition of incredibly pedantic bio-epics - "Midway", "Tora x 3", many others - that manage to swamp amazing historical events in a sea of detail.

I do have a couple of minor disagreements with you:

1. 'A Bridge Too Far' is a mediocre movie in my opinion. If you come into without a background knowledge of Operation Market Garden you'll have no clue as to what's transpiring. The action scenes are underwhelming and the pacing is plodding.

I agree that it helps - lots - to have read Cornelius Ryan's book on the subject. But once that's out of the way (an I did in fact read it as a kid, before the movie came out), I think it's a capable historical movie that showed the direct line between bad decisions and the suffering they cause on the sharp end of the stick.

2. Just because Kubrick did 'Full Metal Jacket' don't automatically toss it aside.

I didn't! I have seen the movie 5-6 times, and knew little of Kubrick's reputation before I saw the movie.

The basic training scenes are extremely well done as are the urban combat sequences in Hue. And how many Vietnam movies can you name that actually show Communist atrocities? The only other one that I can come up with off the top of my head is 'Green Berets' (although there is an implication that no prisoners are taken by the VC in 'Go Tell the Spartans' as well). The scene in 'Full Metal Jacket' with the mass graves and the bodies covered in lime is powerful.

All of this is true. FMJ has its compelling moments.

The background music is haunting and who can forget Joker's quote, "The dead only know one thing; it is better to be alive"?

Yeah, I knew I'd hear from someone about that crack! Yes, FMJ has its redeeming qualities. Many of them. In fact, that may have been the most frustrating part of the movie; there was so much to recommend about it - and yet, by the end of the movie, I still walked out feeling "I've been Kubricked". Maybe it was the closing scene - the survivors of the company walking to the Perfume River singing the Mickey Mouse theme. It summed up the big problem I had - despite it being a fascinating movie, I still felt like I'd been beaten over the head with someone's graduate thesis.

Keep the email coming!

Posted by Mitch at March 10, 2003 07:05 PM