A pleasant surprise – the quality of Milius’ scripts seemed to decline in the 80s, his work became more self-important and too consciously Kurosawa-y (i.e. all about honour and legend): but this is a bright, tough war film, full of guts and glory. It helps in that it’s a bit cynical too –it’s set during the Italian campaign around the Battle of Monte Cassino, and pays due notice to General Clark’s determination to get to Rome, even when it wasn’t the smartest tthing to do militarily.
There's cameos from General Fryberg (the New Zealand commander in charge at Crete), Ernie Pyle, Nisei soldiers, black soldiers, New Zealander diggers... Milius was always more aware than most American writers of war films that other countries and races fought during ww2. The German enemy is treated respectfully - there's a final duel between Rock and a senior German (which is a little silly to be honest).
The film seems to have been written for Arnold Schwarzeneggar - Rock has a German accent (indeed he infiltrates the German lines). I can see why it wasn't made - it's not that it's bad, I really enjoyed it, it's just it would be expensive to do and at the end of the day this is a straight up war-is-hell film. It just seems to lack a bit of X factor - reading I thought it would need direction of the quality of Spielberg's in Saving Private Ryan to make it memorable.
No comments:
Post a Comment