![]() Nicholson) whose obsession with military procedure and discipline causes him, little by little, to stray into collaboration with the enemy. It offers a profound character study of a man (Col. This morality tale disguised as a war film would have enthralled the ancient ethicists. Timely, relevant, and visionary, this film is not to be missed. This movie was made required viewing for US troops in Iraq in the early 2000s, and it is not difficult to understand why. The Casbah simmers with intrigue, double-crosses, and violence and when a special French military unit is called in to quell the uprising, a full-fledged insurgency results. Shot in an ostensibly “documentary” style about the Algerian uprising against French colonial rule in the 1950s, the film is actually a scripted drama with real actors. It ends just the way you would expect it to, and we leave the experience with only its lessons to reflect on.įew films can truly be described as revolutionary. The story is a good one, too: a detachment of infantrymen is sent to locate a soldier who has been called home due to the deaths of his brothers. There is before Saving Private Ryan, and after Saving Private Ryan. But there is no denying that Saving Private Ryan set an entirely new standard for combat scenes. Spielberg has never quite been able to cure himself of a certain weepy sentimentality that at times detracts from this movie’s ferocious power. And yet Das Boot is so much more: this is an operatic tragedy on a grand scale, an awe-inspiring and calamitous spectacle worthy of Wagner himself. The director painstakingly recreated the precise setting and environment for the action, and the viewer finds himself just as claustrophobic and exhilarated (at times) as the sailors aboard ship. This tense drama follows the adventures of a German U-boat crew on patrol in the Atlantic during the Second World War. And it almost feels as if the Doors’ “The End” was made just for this movie. The cinematography has never been matched, and Kurtz’s brooding monologues at the end provide exactly the right tone of mystery and opaqueness. What begins as a straightforward assignment soon turns into an exploration into life’s hidden meanings and darkest secrets. A special forces captain is tasked with tracking down and “terminating the command” of a renegade colonel who has apparently gone insane. It is nominally a “war film,” in the sense that its backdrop is the Vietnam War but like its inspiration, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the setting could be in almost any harsh environment. Some films struggle for truth, for grand meanings, and for answers to the most mystifying questions. At heart, like all of Oliver Stone’s films, Platoon is a morality tale. Barnes, Elias, and the rest of the platoon have now passed into immortality. A raw recruit is plunged into the vortex of the Vietnam War, an experience that tests both his physical endurance and his moral compass. ![]() Its grimy, muddy realism is only exceeded by the strength of the performances and the unforgettable quality of the characters. Platoon is not only the greatest war film ever made, but belongs on that short list of greatest films made in any genre. Each reader, of course, may form his own judgments. There are a great number of war films, but my goal was to select the few that occupy a special category. I present them in no strict order, although I do believe the first five are superior to the remainder. ![]() Someone on Twitter recently asked me to make a list of the top war films. ![]()
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