Friday, October 26, 2007
DIE TRYING
Today's NYTimes Best 1176 Film was Spielberg's
This long film is bookended with some of the most horrific and complicated battle scenes I have ever seen. I am impressed.
That said, I have to say that most of it left me cold despite S-berg's pulling all the strings on the emotionagraph.
John Williams music rising. Claptrap.
This is the 'berg's war film. He is doing all the genrés you know.
I don't think that it stacks up well with Platoon (they got Sizemore for this picture too and deballed him) or Apocalypse Now. I don't even think that its drama matches Catch 22
The concept is stupid.
They wouldn't get away with it in another war.
I don't mean the government, I mean the mogul.
It is hard to get by Tom Hanks in another role that is made for him and he not made for it.
There are moral dilemmas and he delivers 'talks' but they are not very convincing.
There is heroism. There is cowardice redeemed. There are rivals who turn into buddies. There is...............the same thing as any other war movie except the big budget.
It is hard not to think about how they did the work in the big scenes. Is it a total set? How much did it cost? How did they do that?
How many times did they have to shoot it? Did they just go through one big blowout with many cameras?
You can see that I had not suspended disbelief.
I have to admit that I was shaken by it all.
But I didn't like it. That I was shaken or the movie, basically.
It is like an amusement park ride that someone talks you into going on even though you don't like it and you go on it anyway and when you are on you really know you don't like it but you are on it and you can't get off so you make the best of it.
"Making the best of it" is a 3 on the Netflix5 scale.
And Edward Burns was a lot better in it than Tom Hanks.
Labels: best films
