Reviews

Rutger Hauer, as the Commodore, gives his greatest performance since Blade Runner. If you thought Roy Batty was strange, wait till you see him here. He actually seems to achieve what Batty is grasping for at the end of BR. I find it strange that the critic's totally overlooked this "lesson of the master"; Hauer was not nominated for any awards!

Lots of suspension of disbelief is required here, and we came up short. We are both retired teachers, and I taught poetry workshops. The one depicted in the film is incredibly silly, and the teacher is the usual poet-professor-predator waiting to pounce sexually on an emotionally needy student. One has to take the child's "genius" with a large grain of salt. I still maintain that the only good movie ever made about poets and poetry is "8 Mile."

I didn't think it was as bad as some reviewers have said. True, it is full of inaccuracies (A ship's crew is given orders by its captain and replies, "Yes sir!"--huh?), and the buddy-buddy-girl love triangle is straight out of an old Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy movie (Test Pilot, Boom Town). Also, the racial politics are 21st century, not of the WWII era, but that seems standard these days. The first third (other than the opening battle sequence) is pretty bad, but things ramp up when the torpedoes land and everybody goes into the drink. The scenes in the water are curiously undramatic, and maybe they should be so; the men on the Indianapolis seemed to have realized that none of their own efforts would have determined their survival: their individual fates were a crap-shoot, and they could be delivered only by their tardy rescuers. Ironically, the one officer who makes an active attempt to save himself and others is portrayed as a blowhard and a brat, and one is glad to see him paddling off into oblivion. Everyone likes taking a shot at Cage, and Sizemore as well, but the lead actors do a pretty good job; Cage is as stoic as Randolph Scott, and Sizemore dies un-peacefully in his sleep after cradling his severed leg like his unseen child. The younger actors, black and white, seem pretty much interchangeable once they're scuffed up a bit. The plot has a beginning, middle, and end, but only the middle is much good. I try not to worry too much about cgi; you know it's all fake anyway, so why worry about it? The actor who plays the Japanese sub commander, Hashimoto, is a class act, and his scene with Cage is very moving. Still, the invented plot twists (borrowing from The Defiant Ones, The Caine Mutiny, The Enemy Below, and I Wanted Wings, among others) are really less intriguing than the true stories survivors have told. Is it possible that $40M was spent on this?

With all the potential chemistry that Clooney and Roberts could generate, what's the point of a film that keeps them physically separated by a control booth window for the bulk of the movie? It looks as though their separate shooting schedules didn't coordinate and they both played their parts in the absence of the other lead. The movie fails to generation much tension in the audience; the plot goes about where you expected it would, especially after one important detail about the bomb is dropped too early. Think of a movie with Tracy and Hepburn living out separate existences until the last reel. That's pretty much the problem here. You can't have any chemistry of the two essential elements of the compound don't react with each other. Very mild time-burner.

I like it that one reviewer likened this to a Rooney/Garland musical, for it really is, even including the big "production number" for a finale! I showed it to my American lit class today as part of our discussion of naturalism. I could have picked other, better films, but this fit neatly into the 75 min. period. Anyway, it got some applause at the end! There are obviously Soviet-style overtones, especially in the photography and editing of the final sequence, but the film is also explicitly Christian and pro-private ownership (John retains the deed to the farm). What saddens me is that the "survivalists" of today are mainly concerned with their own bug-out-dug-outs and stashing them with goods for their immediate families but no one else.

Despite its naiveté and occasional bad acting (Tom Keene?) it remains an entertaining period film and instructive as well. John Qualen. He was so great in so many movies, including The Grapes of Wrath!

Ruby Dee is great--really getting the desperation of her character. I've always found Earle Hyman a little stiff in the role, but he is strong early on. Both of the sons are adequate. This African-American version is a risky attempt, probably a little illogical overall, but it does show that the play is adaptable to any good cast. I still think that the 1962 version is the best overall, but this one is still worth watching if you can find it. I took me almost a year to track down a DVD of it. I did, eventually, and was happy to have it. I have my American lit students watch all four acts as they exist in four different film versions: Jack Lemmon and Kevin Spacey, this one, one with Olivier and Constance Cummings, and the original film version with Richardson, Stockwell, Robards, and Hepburn. I still believe that the last one, with incredible performances by Robards and Hepburn in the last act, would be hard to top. I saw this at the Alley Theatre a few years ago--a gruelling performance that lasted almost four hours--with the great Ellen Burstyn playing Mrs. Tyrone. I always thought that the ideal casting for her role would have been Geraldine Chaplin--playing her own great-grandmother. But it never came to pass.

Well, it is some kind of camp classic. I saw it once with a friend over 30 years ago and we've been playing some of the classic lines ("You eat guts.") back and forth for years. Great to see it available on DVD and letter-boxed.

"What do you want us to do with that?" (Referring to Murphy, who has been turned into a short string of brats.) "What kind of guy was Murphy?" "He was a good guy." "Bury him." Hackman plays an evil white slaver named Mary Anne. His brother, Weenie, is played by Gregory Walcott, top-billed in the classic Plan 9 from Outer Space (he was the only original cast member to appear in Tim Burton's Ed Wood).

For some reason, Weenie attacks Lee Marvin with, you guessed it, a weenie.

Angel Tompkins, who plays Hackman's squeeze, was a famous Playboy playmate.

Don't know who plays the evil fat boy driving the combine, but he deserves commendation.

It's amazing that Sissy went on from this to greater things.

The last shot is a hoot--Free! Free! Free! Don't watch if you're having hot dogs for dinner.

A guilty pleasure.

The greatness of this film should be judged by its details:

1. Jeffrey Hunter, of ever-honored memory, does a wonderful job, matching John Wayne toe-to-toe.

2. Vera Miles: it ain't a great part, but she brings a total Vera Miles to it.

3. Ken Curtis: "I'll thank you to unhand my fiancée."

4. Ward Bond. Thank god for Ward Bond.

5. And everyone else. Ford knew how to bring together a great supporting cast!

I must say that the whole movie is worthwhile for Wayne's close-ups. That zoom to him after he sees the women that the Comanches have taken is worth the whole movie. Indeed, the camera work is extraordinary--the way Ford and his cinematographer use doors, etc., to shut out parts of the wide screen is amazing. Most people don't notice this until the famous last shot, but it's effectively done several times earlier.