Like the western, which we discussed in a previous edition of this column, the war film has been a constant in cinema from the very beginning. Armed conflict has always translated well to the screen for a number of reasons: the action rivets audiences, the trials and tribulations of the individuals involved raise deep moral questions about duty, honor and why wars are fought in the first place, and they offer us a chance to educate ourselves about history we may not otherwise learn in a classroom. Or, in some cases, they create a story from whole cloth, and it gets so ingrained in us that it feels like it actually happened, even if it didn’t.
Without a new film to review this week and in light of the Memorial Day holiday, Rob and Bridget have opted to return to the Top Five format they utilized for the ranking of Best Picture winners and share their favorite war movies of all time. As always, these choices are completely arbitrary, and readers are free to agree or disagree with us as vehemently as they wish.
To all of those who have served and died in the line of duty, our sincerest thanks and appreciation, and we hope that our readers enjoy the three-day weekend while remembering why they’re enjoying it.
Before we get to the main topic, what are a few underseen or underappreciated war films that didn’t make your list but still deserve a shout out?
Bridget: “Wag the Dog” (1997) and “In the Loop” (2009)- These might be odd choices for war films since they are not set on battlefields, and no guns really go off. Instead, they are incredibly sharp-witted films ABOUT war and the politics and optics behind them. They are both thought-provoking and at times hilarious. They’re worth a watch if you’re unfamiliar with them.
Rob: “Under Fire” (1983) and “A Midnight Clear” (1992)- When I list the cast of both of these films, readers might be shocked to learn that they were box office bombs and aren’t widely remembered today. “Under Fire” stars three of my favorite actors of all time, Gene Hackman, Nick Nolte and Ed Harris, as a pair of TV journalists covering the fall of the Somoza regime in Nicaragua and a mysterious mercenary who has a way of showing up at global hotspots, respectively. Joanna Cassidy also plays another reporter who Hackman and Nolte battle for the affections of, and the situation deteriorates in more ways than one as it goes along. It’s a gritty drama that shines a spotlight on a conflict many Americans ignored at the time and poses difficult moral questions for the journalists involved.
“A Midnight Clear,” based on a William Wharton novel, stars a post “Dead Poets Society” Ethan Hawke along with familiar faces like Gary Sinise (best known as Lieutenant Dan), Kevin Dillon, John C. McGinley, Frank Whaley and Peter Berg as a platoon of American soldiers tasked with guarding a deserted mansion in the Ardennes between Germany and France during the waning days of WWII, only to encounter German soldiers who aren’t interested in fighting due to their belief that the end is near. They seem to reach a mutual understanding and hatch a plan to fake a battle that will allow the Germans to surrender, but it doesn’t go as planned. These two movies are well-acted, tense and philosophical in their explorations of the conflicts they’re portraying.
Alright, let’s get to our rankings.
5. Bridget: Pearl Harbor (2001) – You might want to stop reading now. I acknowledge this is not the greatest war movie or even a good movie in the eyes of many (Search “Pearl Harbor sucked and I miss you” on YouTube). BUT, it occupies a special place in my heart, and on the eve of its 20th anniversary, I’m going to give it a shout-out!
It was the summer of love! As in, I was in love with the movie’s stars Josh Hartnett and Ben Affleck! I could drive and my parents were pretty liberal with my driving and movie habits. As a result, I spent close to 13 hours in movie theaters viewing “Pearl Harbor.” Well, the movie IS over three hours long, so that means I only went four times.
The love triangle is cheesy, the dialog is often cringe-worthy and there is an odd-abundance of dopey humor. But if you like stuff blowing up, then director Michael Bay is here for you! His actual attack scene on Pearl Harbor is pretty incredible. Cool camera angles, point of view missile shots and a kick-butt (albeit under-cast) Cuba Gooding Jr. on a giant gun. Admittedly, I mostly wanted the battle to end to get back to the silly love story, but it is intense and entertaining to watch.
Michael Bay has a lot of junk on his resume (think four Transformers movies), but he also has some fun action movies with his name on them like “Bad Boys” and “The Rock.” If you put “Pearl Harbor” in the latter category and turn of your brain a bit, it can be a lot of fun.
Rob: Patton (1970)- There are great performances, and then there are George C. Scott performances. The Hollywood legend perfectly portrayed one of the most revered generals in American history in this biopic written by Francis Ford Coppola– just before “The Godfather” made him the most acclaimed filmmaker in the world– and directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. His opening speech to the troops in front of a massive flag is an actor’s showcase if I’ve ever seen one, and Schaffner’s camera work throughout the film (especially in the North African desert) is unparalleled. Scott famously became the first actor ever to decline his Oscar (the movie also won Best Picture), but his turn in “Patton” still stands as one of the most towering individual achievements in cinema.
4. Bridget: Braveheart (1995) – This one might not be one you think of when we’re talking about traditional war films, considering its not based around any recent war and is set about 900 years ago. But the movie features several battles in service of a larger real historical war. The film depicts the life of real-life Scottish knight William Wallace leading the Scots in the First War of Scottish Independence against King Edward I of England.
Wallace is played by Mel Gibson, who also directed and produced the film. It went on to win him Oscars for Best Director and took the prize for Best Picture. Sidenote- this film also features an amazing soundtrack composed by Horner! I still listen to this soundtrack on a weekly basis as background music when working.
In my time as an English graduate student who studied medieval literature, I ran across more than one Scottish scholar who heavily mocked this movie for its historical inaccuracies. So the movie flubs details about Wallace’s life, the battles, the English and the kilts that were worn. But, I don’t think that takes away from the film for me.
The battle scenes are epic and brutal. Bodies crashing into each other with mayhem and destruction. That seems pretty accurate. I even like the two love stories that are shoe-horned into the plot. And the ending is a cinematic classic. If you don’t get chills when Wallace, who is being drawn and quartered at the time, screams “FREEEEEEDOOOOM!,” you must have a heart of stone.
Rob: The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)- As my top two choices will reveal, I’m a sucker for any film that depicts jungle warfare, and David Lean’s 1957 Best Picture winning epic about a bridge (no spoilers on what happens to it) somewhere deep in modern-day Myanmar during WWII nearly equals the visual perfection that he would achieve a few years later in “Lawrence of Arabia”– which, for the record, is also technically a war movie, but I don’t want to repeat myself after our Best Picture ranking.
A ragtag bunch of American and British POWs, led by Alec Guinness and William Holden, are forced to build a bridge that will connect Bangkok to Rangoon and confront their own feelings about Japanese soldiers in the process, particularly Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa). The climactic ending is one of the greatest and most stunning I’ve seen, and a certain line (Madness! Madness!) will stick with you forever once you’ve heard it.
3. Bridget: Glory (1989) – In the movie that helped make Denzel Washington a household name, the action follows the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, one of the Union Army's first African-American regiments in the Civil War. Edward Zwick directs. Matthew Broderick plays the commanding officer with Morgan Freeman also starring. I always found Broderick to be an odd choice of lead, considering he was Ferris Bueller only a couple years earlier, but it works given his supposedly high-falutin’ character.
While much of the movie is fictionalized, it is based on a real regiment who saw action in the Civil War. I think we watched this in history class in school. We also owned the VHS since my mom enjoyed it, though I’m pretty sure she bawled through half of the movie. The scene where Washington’s character, Trip, is flogged (probably helping him win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar) will indeed cause any lip to quiver.
This movie too has some scenes and themes that are difficult to watch. It features the blatant racism of the time. The mass-grave scene at the end still makes my throat catch. But the movie is also important and moving. It also features a beautiful soundtrack composed by the great James Horner. I occasionally see this one on TV as well. Stop and give it a re-watch for the dynamic young Denzel and affecting story.
Rob: Paths of Glory (1957)- Stanley Kubrick, ever heard of him? Unfortunately released the same year as “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” the legendary director’s anti-war masterpiece is set during WWI as the war between Germany and France rages. Kirk Douglas stars as a French Colonel who defends a group of soldiers accused of cowardice after a disastrous attempt to claim a “No Man’s Land,” and George Macready and Adolphe Menjou play generals who care more about promotions and honors than the survival of their own men.
Kubrick was 28 when “The Killing” was released and 29 when “Paths of Glory” came out, and I’m now 30. What the heck am I doing with my life?
2. Bridget: Saving Private Ryan (1998)- Most of us have seen this epic World War II film starring Tom Hanks and Matt Damon with Steven Spielberg directing. The movie is often run on cable networks, especially around Memorial or Veterans Day. At close to two and a half hours long, I usually don’t have time to sit and watch the whole film, but I always find myself gravitating to it for a few minutes.
The film follows United States Army Rangers led by Hanks as they search for a paratrooper, Private First Class Ryan (Damon), the last surviving brother of four, the three other brothers having been killed in action. Maybe it’s a little clichéd in its greatness at this point, but the movie holds up as a great war film. The chaos and confusion of the early Omaha Beach scene is palpable. And the action of the last big battle scene at the bridge is gut-rending.
Shout out to the awesome supporting cast who give the movie breadth and provide moments of light-heartedness that are much-needed respite. These include names like Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns, Barry Pepper, Giovanni Ribisi, and Vin Diesel. The movie does not pull many punches as main characters make the ultimate sacrifice, and I always tear up at the end as the movie fades from young Private Ryan to him as old man at Normandy Cemetery.
Rob: The Thin Red Line (1998)- There were two monumental WWII films directed by legendary American filmmakers, stacked with loaded casts and nominated for Best Picture in 1998, but as time has gone on, one has been completely overshadowed by the other.
I know it’s not a popular opinion, but of the two, I happen to prefer Terrence Malick’s meditative adaptation of James Jones’s novel The Thin Red Line, which dramatizes the battle for Guadalcanal in 1942 and places a firm emphasis on how dehumanizing and random war really is. Jim Caviezel, who’s best known for playing Jesus in Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” delivers an incredibly soulful performance as an AWOL soldier, Pvt. Witt, living among the natives who is coerced back into service, and Malick’s unrivaled ability to capture nature is perfectly suited to the lost paradise of the Solomon Islands. The music– both from composer Hans Zimmer and the Melanesian Choir– nearly brings me to tears whenever I hear it.
And the cast is, to this day, one of the most impressive ever assembled: Sean Penn, John Travolta, Nick Nolte, Elias Koteas, Woody Harrelson, John Cusack, Adrien Brody, George Clooney, John C. Reilly and Jared Leto, just to name a few. Legend has it that due to Malick’s 20-year absence from directing and the level of respect he garnered from actors, Brad Pitt, Al Pacino, Gary Oldman, Bruce Willis, Leonardo DiCaprio, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Johnny Depp, Martin Sheen, Billy Bob Thornton, Viggo Mortensen and Nicolas Cage were all interested in the film but didn’t end up working out for various reasons.
During a countdown with Roger Ebert, Martin Scorsese listed “The Thin Red Line” as his second favorite film of the 1990s, so I feel slight vindication in my unabashed love for it. Someday, I’ll finally see the original five-hour cut.
1. Bridget: The Hurt Locker (2008) – The edge-of-your-seat war thriller follows an Explosive Ordnance Disposal team who are targeted by insurgents and face a number of psychological hardships in the early years of the Iraq War. This film features an all-star cast of Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Ralph Fiennes, David Morse, and Guy Pearce. It received tons of accolades including a Best Director Oscar for Kathryn Bigelow as well as Best Picture and Original Screenplay.
All the awards aside, this was a great movie. While the action and plot are pretty sensationalized, I still can’t help but sweating bullets as Renner’s character, James, pulls a wire to reveal seven connected improvised explosive devices that he must disarm or removes his protective suit so he can “die comfortable” if things go wrong. The high intensity fire-fight scenes are also exciting.
Another thing that the movie does so well is deal with the psychological stress of combat. They don’t hold back from discussing trauma and suicidal thoughts. And even the most together characters start to unravel as tensions rise. There are a few scenes that are tough to watch (the discovery of a ‘body bomb’), as in many war movies, but the fact that the events of this movie are set fairly recently, make it even more poignant and eye-opening.
Rob: Apocalypse Now (1979)- Everything about “Apocalypse Now,” from its conception to its production to its various re-cuts over the years, is the stuff of legends.
An instructor told a class that included a young John Milius that Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness had never been successfully adapted for the screen (it had famously vexed Orson Welles), and the maverick screenwriter faced the challenge head-on, swapping the Congo for the Vietnam/Cambodia border. Nearly a decade later (after George Lucas backed out), the film went into production in the Philippines with Francis Ford Coppola at the helm, and anything that could go wrong did. It went way over budget, typhoons and actual conflicts between the government and insurgents delayed the shoots, original lead actor Harvey Keitel was fired and replaced by Martin Sheen, who subsequently had a heart attack, and Marlon Brando was so overweight that his scenes had to be filmed with shadows covering most of his body.
Sounds like a disaster, right? Well, luckily for everyone involved, the end result was a massive financial success and an unquestionable masterpiece, a surreal, politically and morally ambiguous journey into the haze of a psychedelic war and a technicolor nightmare. It’s hard to choose the most iconic moment, but Colonel Kilgore’s (Robert Duvall’s) use of “The Ride of the Valkyries” during an aerial assault is one of the most imitated scenes in film history. A 17-year-old Laurence Fishburne appears as a member of Captain Willard’s escort detail on his mission to locate Colonel Kurtz (Brando) and “terminate with extreme prejudice,” and Dennis Hopper, Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall and Sam Bottoms are all unforgettable in supporting roles.
There were plenty of great films made about Vietnam from various perspectives, but all these years later, I’d still argue that “Apocalypse Now” will endure more than any of the others.
Look out for a new edition of Mid-America at the Movies next week, and as always, whether you’re loving or hating the column (or you’re somewhere in between), send your feedback to news@wrightcountymonitor.com or publisher@grundyregister.com. Thanks for reading!
