You would be hard pressed to find a better year for World War II movies than 1998–unless you looked at 1970 (The McKenzie Break, Patton, Too Late the Hero, Tora! Tora! Tora! Catch-22, Kelly’s Heroes), or 1942 (The Big Blockade, Casablanca, Commandos Strike at Dawn, One of Our Aircraft Is Missing, In Which We Serve, Mrs. Miniver, Saboteur, Spitfire, To Be or Not to Be, Went the Day Well?) so maybe it wouldn’t be that hard. Maybe this is all a cheap trick to re-post the Saving Private Ryan review
Not that Commandos Strike at Dawn is all that great–which is not to disparage Paul Muni in any way.
But two of the three movies being discussed today were nominated for multiple Academy Awards, and one of them redefined the genre. The third one didn’t, but it’s an excellent movie you may have overlooked.
All three of these movies look at the calculus of war: How many lives is it worth to obtain a military objective? In two of them a captain in charge of a company clashes with superior officers. And all of them show infantrymen questioning their role in the larger conflict and their orders—they all seek to show human beings in war.
All three also have pivotal death scenes where characters do not die nobly, they die awfully, and I could say more about this, but I have a strong aversion to spoiling movies, but asking why Sean Penn’s character risks his life for Private Tella, played by Kirk Acevedo, is one of the more interesting questions of The Thin Red Line.
They’re all also better action movies than you might have heard.
New Reviews Posted
The Thin Red Line
When Trumpets Fade