Thin Red Line, The (Action,Drama,War)

Every man fights his own war.
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In World War II, the outcome of the battle of Guadalcanal will strongly influence the Japanese's advance into the pacific. A group of young soldiers is brought in as a relief for the battle-weary Marine units. The exhausting fight for a key-positioned airfield that allows control over a 1000-mile radius puts the men of the Army Rifle company C-for-Charlie through hell. The horrors of war forms the soldiers into a tight-knit group, their emotions develop into bonds of love and even family. The reasons for this war get further away as the world for the men gets smaller and smaller until their fighting is for mere survival and the life of the other men with them.
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English Patient, The (Drama,Romance,War)

In love, there are no boundaries.
In memory, love lives forever.
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Beginning in the 1930's, "The English Patient" tells the story of Count Almasy who is a Hungarian map maker employed by the Royal Geographical Society to chart the vast expanses of the Sahara Desert along with several other prominent explorers. As World War II unfolds, Almasy enters into a world of love, betrayal, and politics that is later revealed in a series of flashbacks while Almasy is on his death bed after being horribly burned in a plane crash.
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U-571 (Action,Drama,War)

Heroes are ordinary men who do extraordinary things in extraordinary times.
You won't come up for air until it's over!
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In the midst of World War II, the battle below the seas rages. The Nazi's have the upper edge as the Allies are unable to crack their war codes. That is, until a wrecked U-boat sends out an SOS signal, and the Allies realise this is their chance to seize the 'enigma coding machine'. But masquerading as Nazi's and taking over the U-boat is the smallest of their problems. The action really begins when they get stranded on the U-boat.
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"U-571" is a clever wind-up toy of a movie, almost a trailer for a video game. Compared to "Das Boot" or "The Hunt for Red October," it's thin soup. The characters are perfunctory, the action is recycled straight out of standard submarine formulas, and there is one shot where a man is supposed to be drowning and you can just about see he's standing on the bottom of the studio water tank.To some degree movies like this always work, at least on a dumb action level. The German destroyer is overhead, dropping depth charges, and the crew waits in hushed suspense while the underwater explosions grow nearer. We're all sweating along with them. But hold on a minute. We saw the Nazis rolling the depth charges overboard, and they were evenly spaced. As the first ones explode at a distance, there are several seconds between each one. Then they get closer. And when the charges are right on top of the sub, they explode one right after another, like a string of firecrackers--dozens of them, as leaks spring and water gushes in and lights blink and the surround sound rocks the theater.At a moment like this, I shouldn't be thinking about the special effects. But I am. They call attention to themselves. They say the filmmakers have made a conscious decision to abandon plausibility and put on a show for the kids. And make no mistake: This is a movie for action-oriented kids. "Das Boot" and "The Hunt for Red October" were about military professionals whose personalities were crucial to the plot. The story of "U-571" is the flimsiest excuse for a fabricated action payoff. Submarine service veterans in the audience are going to be laughing their heads off.Matthew McConaughey stars as Lt. Tyler, an ambitious young man who thinks he's ready for his first command. Not so fast, says Lt. Cmdr. Dahlgren (Bill Paxton). He didn't recommend his second-in-command because he thinks he's not there yet: Not prepared, for example, to sacrifice the lives of some men to save others, or the mission. This info is imparted at one of those obligatory movie dance parties at which all the Navy guys look handsome in white dress uniforms, just before they get an emergency call back to the boat.The mission: A German U-boat is disabled in the mid-Atlantic. On board is the secret Enigma machine, used to cipher messages. The unbreakable Enigma code allows the Nazis to control the shipping lanes. The mission of Dahlgren, Tyler and their men: Disguise their U.S. sub as a Nazi vessel, get to the other sub before the German rescuers can, impersonate Germans, capture the sub with a boarding party, grab Enigma and sink the sub so the rescuers won't suspect what happened."But we're not Marine fighting men," protests one of the sailors. "Neither is the other crew," says a Marine on board, who has conveyed these instructions. "And I'll train your men." Uh, huh. In less than a week? There are no scenes of training, and I'm not sure what happened to the Marine.The details of the confrontation with the Nazi sub I will not reveal. Of course it goes without saying that Tyler gets a chance to take command and see if he has what it takes to sacrifice lives in order to save his men and his mission, etc. If you remember the vivid personalities of the sub crews in "Das Boot" and "Red October," you're going to be keenly aware that no one in this movie seems like much of an individual. When they do have dialogue, it's functional, spare and aimed at the plot. Even Harvey Keitel, as the Chief, is reduced to barking out declarative sentences.The crew members seem awfully young, awfully green, awfully fearful, and so headstrong, they border on mutiny. There's a scene where the (disguised) U.S. sub is checked out by a German reconnaissance plane, and a young sailor on the bridge panics. He's sure the plane is going to strafe them and orders the man on the deck machine gun to fire at it. His superior officer orders the gunner to stand fast. The kid screams, "Fire! Fire!" As the plane comes closer, the officer and the kid are both shouting their orders at the gunner. Without actually consulting Navy regulations, my best guess is that kid should be court-martialed.You can enjoy "U-571" as a big, dumb war movie without a brain in its head. But that doesn't stop it from looking cheesy. Producers Dino and Martha De Laurentiis and director Jonathan Mostow ("Breakdown") have counted on fast action to distract from the plausibility of most of the scenes at sea (especially shots of the raft boarding party). Inside the sub, they have the usual cliches: The sub dives to beyond its rated depth, metal plates creak and bolt heads come loose under the pressure."U-571" can't be blamed for one story element that's standard in all sub movies: The subs can be hammered, battered, shelled, depth-bombed and squeezed by pressure, and have leaks, fires, shattered gauges, ruptures, broken air hoses, weak batteries and inoperable diesel engines--but in the heat of action, everything more or less somehow works. Better than the screenplay, anyway.In case you're wondering, the German sub on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is U-505, and it was boarded and captured not by submariners, but by sailors from the USS Pillsbury, part of the escort group of the carrier USS Guadalcanal. No Enigma machine was involved. That was in 1944. An Enigma machine was obtained on May 9, 1941, when HMS Bulldog captured U-110. On Aug. 23, 1941, U-570 was captured by British planes and ships, without Enigma. This fictional movie about a fictional U.S. submarine mission is followed by a mention in the end credits of those actual British missions. Oh, the British deciphered the Enigma code, too. Come to think of it, they pretty much did everything in real life that the Americans do in this movie.Download here

Hot Shots! Part Deux (Action,Comedy,War)

Grab your guns! It's Hot Shots Part Deux!
Just Deux it.
The mother of all sequels!
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Topper Harley has retired again, now living in a budhist monastery, and again he's asked to lead a special operation into Iraq, to rescue the guys who were sent to rescue the guys who were sent to rescue some prisoners left behind after the Persian Gulf War, where he will meet again with his beloved Ramada while he tries to uncover who the traitor is and kill as many Iraqis as he can.
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There is a love scene in "Hot Shots, Part Deux" in which the hero, a dashing Navy commando played by Charlie Sheen, is dining with a beautiful espionage expert played by Valeria Golino. They are having spaghetti in an Italian restaurant, and somehow they each get one end of a log strand of pasta into their mouths, and suck it in until their faces come closer, and closer . . . and they kiss.This is, of course, a famous shot stolen from "Lady and the Tramp." So is the next shot, in which Sheen lovingly uses his nose to push a meatball in the direction of his lady love. One of the pleasures of watching a spoof like this is to spot the references; it's like a quiz on pop art.The Golina character is named Ramada Rodham Hayman. The other principal female character in the movie, played by Brenda Bakke, is named Michelle Rodham Hudleston. So it goes. The movie is directed by Jim Abrahams, who was one of the perpetrators of "Airplane!" (1980), the satirical parody that spawned this and many other films, including "Top Secret!" "The Naked Gun" and the original "Hot Shots!" The current film takes "Rambo III" as its starting place, with lots of loving little touches. The Sheen character, patterned on the Stallone original, is a pumped-up man of few words, who at the beginning of the film has left his life of action and violence to live a life of contemplation with monks in a remote Eastern land. He is tracked down there by his old commanding officer, played by Richard Crenna in a repeat of his own role in "Rambo III." Sheen wants to stay where he is, until Crenna tells him a story that makes him realize he is needed for a dangerous mission in the Middle East.The story is "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." Sheen, named Topper Harley in the movie, is needed to rescue Americans who were sent in to rescue other Americans who were sent in to rescue other Americans. Why is his participation essential? "You are the best of what we have left!" In the unnamed Arab country, we see a Saddam Hussein look-alike living a life of blissful domesticity, interrupted by moments of mayhem and torture. And we join Sheen on the mission, which is constructed out of countless jokes based on the "Rambo" movies and other commando epics.There are also the usual in-jokes. Proceeding down an Asian river in a gunboat, Sheen passes another boat headed in the opposite direction. On it is his father, Martin Sheen, who starred, of course, in "Apocalypse Now," and is apparently still inside that movie as we see him. "Loved you in `Wall Street'," the father shouts, as the boats pass.Movies like this are more or less impervious to the depredations of movie critics. Either you laugh, or you don't. I laughed. Will this genre ever run out of steam? "Hot Shots Part Deux" doesn't have the high-voltage nonstop comedy of "Airplane!" and "Top Secret!," still the best of their kind, and it isn't as hard on Stallone as it could have been. But as long as the Hollywood assembly lines keep groaning, there will probably be a function for these corrective measures.Download here

Rambo III (Action,War)

God would have mercy John Rambo won't!
The first was for himself. The second for his country. This time it's to save his friend.
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John Rambo's former Vietnam superior, Colonel Samuel Trautman, has been assigned to lead a mission to help the Mujahedeen rebels who are fighting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but the Buddhist Rambo turns down Trautman's request that Rambo help out. When the mission goes belly up and Trautman is kidnapped and tortured by Russian Colonel Zaysen, Rambo launches a rescue effort and allies himself with the Mujahedeen rebels and gets their help in trying to rescue Trautman from Zaysen.
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There is a love scene in "Hot Shots, Part Deux" in which the hero, a dashing Navy commando played by Charlie Sheen, is dining with a beautiful espionage expert played by Valeria Golino. They are having spaghetti in an Italian restaurant, and somehow they each get one end of a log strand of pasta into their mouths, and suck it in until their faces come closer, and closer . . . and they kiss.This is, of course, a famous shot stolen from "Lady and the Tramp." So is the next shot, in which Sheen lovingly uses his nose to push a meatball in the direction of his lady love. One of the pleasures of watching a spoof like this is to spot the references; it's like a quiz on pop art.The Golina character is named Ramada Rodham Hayman. The other principal female character in the movie, played by Brenda Bakke, is named Michelle Rodham Hudleston. So it goes. The movie is directed by Jim Abrahams, who was one of the perpetrators of "Airplane!" (1980), the satirical parody that spawned this and many other films, including "Top Secret!" "The Naked Gun" and the original "Hot Shots!" The current film takes "Rambo III" as its starting place, with lots of loving little touches. The Sheen character, patterned on the Stallone original, is a pumped-up man of few words, who at the beginning of the film has left his life of action and violence to live a life of contemplation with monks in a remote Eastern land. He is tracked down there by his old commanding officer, played by Richard Crenna in a repeat of his own role in "Rambo III." Sheen wants to stay where he is, until Crenna tells him a story that makes him realize he is needed for a dangerous mission in the Middle East.The story is "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." Sheen, named Topper Harley in the movie, is needed to rescue Americans who were sent in to rescue other Americans who were sent in to rescue other Americans. Why is his participation essential? "You are the best of what we have left!" In the unnamed Arab country, we see a Saddam Hussein look-alike living a life of blissful domesticity, interrupted by moments of mayhem and torture. And we join Sheen on the mission, which is constructed out of countless jokes based on the "Rambo" movies and other commando epics.There are also the usual in-jokes. Proceeding down an Asian river in a gunboat, Sheen passes another boat headed in the opposite direction. On it is his father, Martin Sheen, who starred, of course, in "Apocalypse Now," and is apparently still inside that movie as we see him. "Loved you in `Wall Street'," the father shouts, as the boats pass.Movies like this are more or less impervious to the depredations of movie critics. Either you laugh, or you don't. I laughed. Will this genre ever run out of steam? "Hot Shots Part Deux" doesn't have the high-voltage nonstop comedy of "Airplane!" and "Top Secret!," still the best of their kind, and it isn't as hard on Stallone as it could have been. But as long as the Hollywood assembly lines keep groaning, there will probably be a function for these corrective measures.Download here

Apocalypse Now (Action,Adventure,Drama,War)

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It is the height of the war in Vietnam, and U.S. Army Captain Willard (Sheen) is sent by Colonel Lucas (Harrison Ford) and a General to carry out a mission that, officially, 'does not exist - nor will it ever exist'. The mission: To seek out a mysterious Green Beret Colonel, Walter Kurtz (Brando), whose army has crossed the border into Cambodia and is conducting hit-and-run missions against the Viet Cong and NVA. The army believes Kurtz has gone completely insane and Willard's job is to eliminate him! Willard, sent up the Nung River on a U.S. Navy patrol boat, discovers that his target is one of the most decorated officers in the U.S. Army. His crew meets up with surfer-type Lt-Colonel Kilgore (Duvall), head of a U.S Army helicopter cavalry group which eliminates a Viet Cong outpost to provide an entry point into the Nung River. After some hair-raising encounters, in which some of his crew are killed, Willard, Lance (Bottoms) and Chef (Forrest) reach Colonel Kurtz's outpost, beyond the Do Lung Bridge. Now, after becoming prisoners of Kurtz, will Willard & the others be able to fulfill their mission?
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We Were Soldiers (Action,Drama,History,War)

400 U.S paratroopers. 4000 Vietnamese soldiers. 12 000 miles away from home. 1 man led them into battle.
Fathers, Brothers, Husbands & Sons.
We were... young, brave, husbands, wives, sons, mothers, daughters, soldiers.
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In a place soon to be known as The Valley of Death, in a small clearing called landing zone X-Ray, Lt. Colonel Hal Moore (Mel Gibson) and 400 young fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons, all troopers from an elite American combat division, were surrounded by 4,000 North Vietnamese soldiers. The ensuing battle was one of the most savage in U.S. history. We Were Soldiers Once...And Young is a tribute to the nobility of those men under fire, their common acts of uncommon valor, and their loyalty to and love for one another.
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'I wonder what Custer was thinking," Lt. Col. Hal Moore says, "when he realized he'd moved his men into slaughter." Sgt. Maj. Plumley, his right-hand man, replies, "Sir, Custer was a p----." There you have the two emotional poles of "We Were Soldiers," the story of the first major land battle in the Vietnam War, late in 1965. Moore (Mel Gibson) is a family man, and a Harvard graduate who studies international relations. Plumley (Sam Elliott) is an Army lifer, hard, brave, unsentimental. They are both about as good as battle leaders get. But by the end of that first battle, they realize they may be in the wrong war.The reference to Custer is not coincidence. Moore leads the First Battalion of the Seventh Cavalry, Custer's regiment. "We will ride into battle and this will be our horse," Moore says, standing in front of a helicopter. Some 400 of his men ride into battle in the Ia Drang Valley, known as the "Valley of Death," and are surrounded by some 2,000 North Vietnamese troops. Moore realizes it's an ambush, and indeed in the film's opening scenes he reads about just such a tactic used by the Vietnamese against the French a few years earlier."We Were Soldiers," like "Black Hawk Down," is a film in which the Americans do not automatically prevail in the style of traditional Hollywood war movies. Ia Drang cannot be called a defeat, since Moore's men fought bravely and well, suffering heavy casualties but killing even more Viet Cong. But it is not a victory; it's more the curtain-raiser of a war in which American troops were better trained and better equipped, but outnumbered, out maneuvered and finally outlasted.For much of its length, the movie consists of battle scenes. They are not as lucid and easy to follow as the events in "Black Hawk Down," but then the terrain is different, the canvas is larger, and there are no eyes in the sky to track troop movements. Director Randall Wallace (who wrote "Braveheart" and "Pearl Harbor") does make the situation clear from moment to moment, as Moore and his North Vietnamese counterpart try to outsmart each other with theory and instinct.Wallace cuts between the American troops, their wives back home on an Army base, and a tunnel bunker where Ahn (Don Duang), the Viet Cong commander, plans strategy on a map. Both men are smart and intuitive. The enemy knows the terrain and has the advantage of surprise, but is surprised itself at the way the Americans improvise and rise to the occasion."Black Hawk Down" was criticized because the characters seemed hard to tell apart. "We Were Soldiers" doesn't have that problem; in the Hollywood tradition it identifies a few key players, casts them with stars, and follows their stories. In addition to the Gibson and Elliott characters, there are Maj. Crandall (Greg Kinnear), a helicopter pilot who flies into danger; the gung-ho Lt. Geoghegan (Chris Klein), and Joe Galloway (Barry Pepper), a photojournalist and soldier's son, who hitches a ride into battle, and finds himself fighting at the side of the others to save his life.The key relationship is between Moore and Plumley, and Gibson and Elliott depict it with quiet authority. They're depicted as professional soldiers with experience from Korea. As they're preparing to ride into battle, Moore tells Plumley, "Better get yourself that M-16." The veteran replies: "By the time I need one, there'll be plenty of them lying on the ground." There are.Events on the Army base center around the lives of the soldiers' wives, including Julie Moore (Madeleine Stowe), who looks after their five children and is the de facto leader of the other spouses. We also meet Barbara Geoghegan (Keri Russell), who, because she is singled out, gives the audience a strong hint that the prognosis for her husband is not good.Telegrams announcing deaths in battle are delivered by a Yellow Cab driver. Was the Army so insensitive that even on a base they couldn't find an officer to deliver the news? That sets up a shameless scene later, when a Yellow Cab pulls up in front of a house and of course the wife inside assumes her husband is dead, only to find him in the cab. This scene is a reminder of "Pearl Harbor," in which the Ben Affleck character is reported shot down over the English Channel and makes a surprise return to Hawaii without calling ahead. Call me a romantic, but when your loved one thinks you're dead, give them a ring."We Were Soldiers" and "Black Hawk Down" both seem to replace patriotism with professionalism. This movie waves the flag more than the other (even the Viet Cong's Ahn looks at the stars and stripes with enigmatic thoughtfulness), but the narration tells us, "In the end, they fought for each other." This is an echo of the "Black Hawk Down" line, "It's about the men next to you. That's all it is." Some will object, as they did with the earlier film, that the battle scenes consist of Americans with killing waves of faceless, non-white enemies. There is an attempt to give a face and a mind to the Viet Cong in the character of Ahn, but significantly, he is not listed in the major credits and I had to call the studio to find out his name and the name of the actor who played him. Yet almost all war movies identify with one side or the other, and it's remarkable that "We Were Soldiers" includes a dedication not only to the Americans who fell at Ia Drang, but also to "the members of the People's Army of North Vietnam who died in that place." I was reminded of an experience 15 years ago at the Hawaii Film Festival, when a delegation of North Vietnamese directors arrived with a group of their films about the war. An audience member noticed that the enemy was not only faceless, but was not even named: At no point did the movies refer to Americans. "That is true," said one of the directors. "We have been at war so long, first with the Chinese, then the French, then the Americans, that we just think in terms of the enemy."Download here

U-571 (Action,Drama,War)

Heroes are ordinary men who do extraordinary things in extraordinary times.
You won't come up for air until it's over!
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In the midst of World War II, the battle below the seas rages. The Nazi's have the upper edge as the Allies are unable to crack their war codes. That is, until a wrecked U-boat sends out an SOS signal, and the Allies realise this is their chance to seize the 'enigma coding machine'. But masquerading as Nazi's and taking over the U-boat is the smallest of their problems. The action really begins when they get stranded on the U-boat.
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