Wednesday, June 25, 2008
ONE WAR TOO FAR
Today's NYTimes Best 1176 Film was William Wellman's
This is really a sort of biopic of Ernie Pyle the war correspondent. It chronicles his time with a particular company of infantry and sort of follows his human interest news stories.
It is a compendium of WWII clichés.
It starts slow, has a battle, gets slow again. It is human suffering trivialized.
There is the company Romeo, the company hard ass, the sergeant with a heart of gold, the dog whose human is the first casualty and is taken over by the whole company (it is not a cocker spaniel as shown in the jacket art—more a mangy mutt).
To say that I doubt the veracity of all this is an overstatement. Actually, I suppose that some of it is true or the cliché wouldn't exist.
There is one tense battle scene in the first hour. All the rest is lying around talking about battle. And back home. And each other. And petting the dog.
That is all I saw. An hour of this kind of thing is tough enough slogging. I was beginning to feel as though I had it worse than the soldiers.
Burgess Meredith is Ernie Pyle and, oddly enough, he has a really passive role in this. He doesn't even seem to interact with the soldiers.
It was good to see Robert Mitchum though. He was pretty good when he got to do something.
I didn't like it and I didn't watch it all and so I will give it a 1 out of Netflix5.
Labels: best films
