Celluloid Heroes

In this game the most committed wins.

Viewed through a post-9/11 prism, Edward Zwick’s The Siege seems at times both impossibly naïve and uncomfortably prescient. Ultimately, however, this movie is more effective as postulation than it is as a narrative, smarter about its subject matter than about its story. Whatever points it scores are undermined by shallow, clichéd characters and a stock, predictable ending.

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In this world, a man himself is nothing. And there ain’t no world but this one.

Terrence Malick’s first film as director in twenty years assembles various pieces of a great film into a mediocre one. The Thin Red Line is a meandering, obtuse rumination on the dehumanizing effects of war and will test the patience of even the most indulgent filmgoer. It runs close to three hours but probably only contains about two hours of story worth telling and not all of that feels like it comes from the same story.

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From my way of thinkin’, sir, this entire mission is a serious misallocation of valuable military resources.

Saving Private Ryan is almost two movies in one. The first is a short but intense 30-minute piece about the Omaha Beach landings while the second is a more traditional “unit” picture running about two-and-a-half hours. Only the presence of the same actors in both ties the two parts together. Each could probably stand separately but folded into the same film, the first part helps give the second, longer narrative layers of meaning and emotional weight that it wouldn’t otherwise carry.

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Young Robert: He said that Han Solo was cooler than Captain Kirk.
Shatner: Kick the little fucker’s ass.

This movie sadly got overshadowed by the much more popular Galaxy Quest (review), which went into general release later in the same year. Both were affectionate spoofs/tributes to the phenomenon of Star Trek fandom, although Free Enterprise’s targets cover a broader spectrum of popular culture. That’s also the film’s chief flaw, a lack of discipline and a need for some editing.

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