What Is It Good For? War Movies In June: Army of Shadows (1969)

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I did an absolutely terrible job of watching and reviewing war movies for this theme. I rewatched the great Army of Shadows this past month, and while I didn’t get around to writing anything about it this time, I did jot down some thoughts on my Letterboxd the first time I watched it a few years ago. So, I thought I’d reproduce those here:

There is a scene early in Army of Shadows in which three French Resistance fighters capture a traitor. They take him to an abandoned house to execute him. When they arrive, they find a family has moved in next door. The gun they hoped to use is of no use. It is too loud. The family would hear.

They search the house for a knife. No luck. The basement connects to the neighbors’. No good. They stand together, these three men, alongside the man they plan to kill, discussing what to do.

They could take him somewhere else. No time. They could call a friend and have him do it. No, it is their job. They could strangle him with a towel tied around a stick that would slowly tighten around his neck. Yes, that would work.

The trouble is, none of these men are trained killers or soldiers. They were regular people before the war, but now they’ve joined a make-shift army. They’ve found a cause. They cannot let this man live, or they jeopardize everything.

They were prepared to shoot the traitor, which is impersonal and quick. They are not trained to watch the life drain out of him as they slowly tighten the towel. They do the deed and leave not as great heroes, but men who’ve lost some part of themselves, deflated, almost defeated.

Jean-Pierre Melville was a member of the French Resistance, and Army of Shadows is his film about the deep wounds, physical, psychological, and spiritual such a thing leaves inside a person. It isn’t a film with a lot of thrilling action sequences or where great heroes emerge. Like the scene I’ve just described, it is a movie about men and women who fight for a cause they believe in, who are willing to do things that destroy them inside for the greater good.

This was my sixth Melville film in the last couple of weeks. I’ve loved nearly all of them, but this is his masterpiece.

What Is It Good For: War Movies In June – The Wild Geese (1978)

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I wrote about this for a Now Watching segment but since it is a war movie I wanted to expand upon those thoughts here.

I’m usually a big fan of these men-on-a-mission type films. You know, the ones where a disparate group of men come together to perform a nearly impossible task. Movies like The Dirty Dozen or The Guns of Navarone are great fun, but The Wild Geese fails at nearly every turn. It isn’t the fault of the cast, which is pretty well stacked, featuring Richard Burton, Roger Moore, and Richard Harris amongst others. But I found it interminably dull.

Burton plays Allen Faulkner, a retired British Army Colonel turned mercenary. He’s tasked with rescuing Julius Limbani (Winston Ntshona), an imprisoned African President who is set to be executed by the military leaders who arrested him during a coup. Faulkner recruits Captain Rafer Janders (Harris), Lieutenant Shawn Fynn (Moore), and a host of others.

The men receive some training from a hard drill sergeant, and then are flown to the prison location and parachute in. They attack the base, rescue Limbani, but have trouble escaping. Later, there will be a (completely) obvious twist.

The plot is so basic, I knew pretty much what was going to happen once it began. You know exactly which of the main cast will die from their introductions. The script plods. There are lots of action sequences, but they are so dully directed that one hardly notices.

The film makes faint nods towards anti-colonial, anti-racist sentiments, but they are poorly done. One of the men is an out-and-out racist, throwing around the N-word and making sarcastic remarks towards the Limbani. But then he gets a scene in which he sits and talks to Limbani, and the President’s calm manner and reasonable discussions miraculously turn the racist around.

Limbani is regularly described as a great man, but as a character, he’s given very little to do and very few lines to say. He’s just someone these kind, white, British people have to rescue, not a real character.

You could almost forgive that if the action was any good. Or if you actually cared about any of these characters. Instead I just scratched my head at it all and hoped it would soon come to an end.

What Is It Good For? War Movies In June: The Flying Leathernecks (1951)

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Well, it is the 10th of June, and this is my first post for this month’s theme. It is only the third war movie I’ve watched this month (and technically I watched this one at the end of May). Hopefully, I’ll get a few more in before the month is out.

I love me some John Wayne. The dude had some questionable politics and his views on race relations (amongst other things) were pretty horrid, but damn if he wasn’t a great movie star. He had a screen presence like few others. I’ve mostly seen him in westerns, but he made lots of other movies, including a good number of war films.

I’ve always heard his World War II films were not very good, and if Flying Leathernecks is any indication, I heard right.

Directed by the great Nicholas Ray, Flying Leathernecks finds Wayne playing Major Dan Kirby, who, as the film begins, is assigned command of a group of Marine Aviators on the island of Guadalcanal. This is a surprise to everyone, as Captain Carl “Grif” Griffin (Robert Ryan) was the presumed next in command.

The two have very different leadership styles. Kirby is gruff and tough; he takes no stuff from anyone and demands a lot from his men. Grif is friendlier, kinder. He has a genuine concern for the welfare of his men and is willing to let a little discipline slide to boost morale.

The film is clearly on Kirby’s side. He’s more than willing to sacrifice his men for the greater good. The whole middle section of the film finds him pushing his men to the brink. They go on mission after mission, well after they are completely exhausted. Grif argues they need a break, that maybe some of the reserves can take on some missions. But Kirby is unrelenting.

Seen through my modern (and very much non-military eyes,) I found myself agreeing with Grif. Yes, war is hell, and sacrifices must be made. A commander does have to make tough choices. But also, burned-out soldiers don’t make good fighters. Drive them to the breaking point, and sooner or later, they are going to break.

But that isn’t this movie, and by the end, he learns to be more like Kirby.

Honestly, that argument would be more interesting if this were a good movie, but it isn’t. Wayne and Ryan do their best, but the script lets them down at just about every moment. The actual battle scenes don’t help much. There are a lot of shots with our pilots sitting in model aircraft with fake-looking backgrounds spliced into actual war footage that doesn’t really match.

The whole thing is rather dull, and the fact that I could never buy into the argument it was making just made it worse.

What Is It Good For? War Movies in June

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This will be the first time I’ve done a monthly theme in June. I’m not exactly sure why that is, except that I’ve often done several themes in the first half of the year (Foreign Film February, Westerns in March, Awesome ’80s in January, etc.) and so when June rules around I’m guessing I’ve been a little burned out and wanted to have a month where I could watch whatever I wanted to.

Apparently, I feel rested this year, or maybe I just don’t want to watch anything…Anyway, this month’s theme is war movies.

I’m a peacenik. I abhor violence in every form. In real life, anyway. On the screen, I love me some violence. And what is more violent than war?

I never joined the military. I have pretty complicated feelings towards the military as an organization, but I have the utmost respect for those who choose to serve, especially those who put their lives on the line in war.

I don’t really care to get political in this intro. I imagine plenty of the films I’ll watch will be very political, so I’ll let them do the talking. Great war movies put you in the muck, allow you to experience the chaos, the heroism, and the horror of being there. Nothing can really replicate that experience, but a great movie probably gets you as close as you can without actually being at war. They are as close to it as I ever want to be anyway.

Someone once said that there is no true anti-war movie because the very nature of cinema makes war seem exciting. That’s probably true, but a good war movie definitely makes me more of a peacenik than I am naturally.

But it is also true that great war movies make me long for meaning in my own life. Having life distilled down to survival, to fighting for something meaningful, really makes you wonder how you’d behave. Or at least I wonder how I’d behave put into a situation like that. Like the ones I’ll be watching this month, and writing about.

Now Watching: The Wild Geese (1978)

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The Wild Geese (1978)
Directed by: Andrew V. McLaglen
Starring: Richard Burton, Roger Moore, and Richard Harris

Synopsis: A British multinational company seeks to overthrow a vicious dictator in central Africa. It hires a band of (largely aged) mercenaries in London and sends them in to save the virtuous but imprisoned opposition leader, who is also critically ill and due for execution. Just when the team has performed a perfect rescue, the multinational does a deal with the vicious dictator, leaving the mercenary band to escape under their own steam and exact revenge.

Rating: 1/10

Well, as yesterday goes to show, I’m really not cut out for this idea of posting several things per day. I just don’t have that much to say. Or maybe sometimes I’m just too tired. Or lazy. I’ll keep trying this week, but thus far, my numbers aren’t improving either. But I’m really not ready to give this site up, so I’m not sure what I’m going to do.

For now, I’m gonna keep writing when the spirit moves me.

I even forgot to mention that this month’s theme is War Movies in June.

The Wild Geese is a men assembled to do a mission movie in the vein of something like Where Eagles Dare or The Dirty Dozen. It has a great cast, but fails to be even a little bit interesting. It doesn’t help that the white mercenaries’ in Africa plot is steeped in colonialism and racism.

The film does acknowledge this somewhat with a brief scene in which the super-duper racist white guy has a five-minute chat with the sainted black politician (who is vaulted as this amazing human but is only given a handful of lines to speak) and changes his racist ways.

But honestly, you expect that sort of thing in this sort of film. What you don’t expect is action scenes that are poorly staged, poorly directed, and rather dull.