FILM REVIEW OF ''IRON SKY: THE COMIING RACE" (2019)

You can’t enjoy some sequels unless you’ve seen the original film that inspired them.  Finnish director Timo Vuorensola’s imaginative sci-fi, fantasy farce “Iron Sky: The Coming Race” (*** OUT OF ****), the follow-up to his earlier epic “Iron Sky” (2012), illustrates this maxim.  If you’ve never heard of “Iron Sky,” don’t be surprised.  Vuorensola’s original film made its greatest inroads into the American market with its home video release.  Coining less than $123 thousand at the box office, “Iron Sky” received a limited domestic release for a two-month period in only eight theaters.  Internationally, “Iron Sky” grossed $11.5 million, surpassing but not tripling its seven million Euros production budget.  The Asylum’s ridiculous mockbuster parody “Nazis from the Center of the Earth,” which would make Jules Verne cringe in anguish, skewered it with little success.  Since the sunset of World War Two, Nazis had been fodder for European zombie sagas, such as “Dead Snow” (2009) and “Dead Snow: Red Vs Dead” (2014) as well as “Outpost” (2008), “Outpost: Black Sun” (2012), and “Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz” (2013).  Not only is the $17 million budgeted “Iron Sky: The Coming Race” a sequel to “Iron Sky,” but it also qualifies as a prequel, since it takes us back to the Mesozoic Era: the Age of Dinosaurs.  Indeed, just as pungent with its witticisms as its predecessor, “Iron Sky 2” picks up the “Iron Sky” narrative thread and considerably expands it in different dimensions.  Timo Vuorensola doesn’t cover the same conflicts as he did in his hilarious original film that thumbed its nose at political correctitude.  A brief recap of “Iron Sky” shows the Sarah Palin-esque U.S. President (Stephanie Paul of “Crazy Love”) going toe-to-toe against the madcap Moon Nazis and triggering the nuclear annihilation of the Earth  This Armageddon forced the human race to abandon Earth.  Ironically, these fortunate survivors wind-up relocating on the dark side of the Moon, the same place where the Nazis had established their base 70 years after World War II!  

“Iron Sky: The Coming Race” occurs 20 years after the destruction of Earth.  If you saw the original, Nazi school mistress Richter (Julia Dietze of “Iron Sky”) and captured U.S. Astronaut James Washington (Christopher Kirby of “The Matrix Reloaded”) started out as enemies and then became lovers. They had a daughter, Obianaju 'Obi' Washington (Lara Rossi of “Robin Hood”), and she has grown up to serve as a jack-of-all-trades at Neomenia, the former Nazi moon base station.  Sadly, Götz Otto could not reprise his role as the second Führer, because he kicked the bucket in the original “Iron Sky.”  Nevertheless, Wolfgang Kortzfleisch (Udo Kier of “Melancholia”), who took an awful beating from Otto, returns from the dead in one of the film’s several surprises. Obi’s wizened mother Renate governs life on Neomenia where Nazis no longer rule. Meanwhile, Obi struggles to maintain the deteriorating moon base facilities against the ever-present threat of moon quakes. Watching her scramble about the grungy, industrial factory interiors with breathless abandon to tackle problems establishes Obi as a heroine who refuses to wait for problems to repair themselves. Basically, Neomenia has degenerated into a ghetto because of overpopulation and a shortage of supplies.  Were things not complicated enough, a Russian spaceship blunders in from out of nowhere, and Renate must contend with asylum seekers.  Initially, Renata had decided to obliterate the spacecraft.  Obi thwarted this atrocity by shutting down Neomenia’s weapons system.  Later, she takes a romantic interest in the handsome but goofy Russian pilot, Sasha (Vladimir Burlakov of “Lost in Siberia”), because she argues that humanity must migrate to Mars. A cannibalized space shuttle offers their only avenue of salvation. Along the way, Vuorensola gives us time off from the doomsday prospect, so Obi and Sasha can flirt with each other.  Later, Obi collides with the treacherous Kortzfleisch, and he tells her about a fantastic element at the center of the Earth that will save mankind and provide endless fuel for the space shuttle.

The lightweight humor in “Iron Sky: The Coming Race” will either get you to howl hoarsely or grin at its skewered ingenuity.  The lookalike Sarah Palin president, which was a great sight gag in “Iron Sky,” is still a hoot to behold.  She spent most of her time in “Iron Sky” on a treadmill, but here she mutates into a monster with other infamous demagogues, such as Stalin, Hitler, and Idi Amin. One cheeky scene shows all of these dastards arranged around an oblong table in a tableau that imitates Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci’s renowned late 15th-century mural painting of "The Last Supper." Tongue-in-cheek humor lurks in every frame.  Timo Vuorensola is a gifted visual storyteller with an impeccable sense of pacing and pictorial composition. Like “Iron Sky,” “Iron Sky 2” doesn’t wear out its welcome at 90 agile minutes.  The larger-than-life shenanigans are nimble, flavorful, but sometimes surprisingly violent.  Hitler straddles a T-Rex like a cowboy at a rodeo, and the beast gobbles up the body of a man in its gigantic jaws.  Happily, his demise is bloodless.  Vuorensola and company borrow from other blockbusters, including a Hans Solo type Russian pilot as well as a harrowing “Raiders of the Lost Ark” cliffhanger caper.  A gigantic molten boulder tumbles after our heroes as they struggle to control chariots drawn by rampaging Triceratops dinosaurs! Fortunately, the CGI imagery passes muster, just don’t bother to freeze-frame the images. Clearly, Vuorensola conjured up some picturesque ideas that his crowd-funded budget couldn’t accommodate. 

The warped but inspired artistry of the “Iron Sky” epics is Hollywood didn’t forge them.  The original movie’s Nazi plot isn’t the kind of comic material Hollywood would have sunk multi-millions into for a movie that “culminated in Armageddon.”  These two Finnish satires provide refreshing but audacious commentary.  Incredibly enough, while “Iron Sky: The Coming Race” was awaiting home video release, director Timo Vuorensola had already embarked on a third installment in the franchise: “Iron Sky: The Ark” with a release date set for 2020!

 

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE MONUMENTS MEN'' (2014)

I love World War II movies, even stinkers like Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds.”  For the record, I prefer Enzo G. Castellari’s made-in-Italy, World War II mission movie “The Inglorious Bastards” (1978) that Tarantino took and altered drastically with his remake.  Nevertheless, I haven’t seen a good World War II epic since Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” (1998) with Tony Hanks.  Everything after “Saving Private Ryan” pales in comparison to classics such as “A Bridge Too Far ,” “Battle of the Bulge,” “Beach Red,” “Castle Keep,” “Catch 22,” “Sands of Iwo Jima,” “The Bridge at Remagen,” “The Devil’s Brigade,” “The Dirty Dozen,” “The Great Escape,” “The Guns of Navarone,” “The Longest Day,” and “The Train.”  These seminal films appear with regularity during patriotic holidays on both AMC and Turner Classics.  Initially, I thought writer & director George Clooney’s “The Monuments Men” (** OUT OF ****) might tower above all the second-rate shrapnel that Hollywood has been shelling out like “Normandy,” “Company of Heroes,” “Battle Force,” “Fortress,” “Red Tails,” “Saints and Soldiers: Airborne Creed,” and “Pathfinders.”  Unfortunately, this fascinating chapter in World War II history about Allied soldiers who toiled to save the treasured paintings and sculptures of Western Civilization that Adolf Hitler looted during his 12-year reign as Der Führer amounts to a monumental bore.  Meantime, Clooney has assembled a superlative cast including “Private Ryan” himself Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville, and Cate Blanchett.  The production values look first-rate.  Clooney’s production designers and art directors shot the works with their $70-million budget to create sprawling scenes of bombed out towns and authentic aircraft laden military landing fields.  Furthermore, to accentuate the realism, they lensed these maneuvers on location in England and Germany, too.

“The Monuments Men” covers an overlooked chapter in American military history that occurred after the Allies broke through Hitler’s defenses on the French coast in 1944.  Clooney and co-scripter Grant Heslov, who co-produced and appears briefly as a doctor in a scene, adapted the history tome “The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History” by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter.  This World War II movie focuses on an outfit of old-ball scholars, architects, and museum curators who sought to recover all the art works that Hitler pilfered and planned to place in a Nazi museum in his home town in Austria.  An earlier text “The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War” by Lynn H. Nichols documented this little known part of history.  Indeed, Public Broadcasting produced a documentary based on the Nichols book back in 2008.  The documentary is more exciting than anything that Clooney recreates in this static spectacle.  Burt Lancaster played a brave French railroad official in “The Train” (1964) who thwarted the Nazis from stealing art.

“The Monuments Men” resembles a 1960s era World War II blockbuster with its plethora of military uniforms and equipment.  World War II fanatics will appreciate the authentic Sherman tank that rumbles past the camera in two scenes.  No, you won’t find any M-48 Patton tanks masquerading as either Sherman or Tiger tanks.  Unfortunately, little violence occurs in this loquacious, leisurely 119 minute opus.  Two of our heroes die from enemy bullets with a minimum of bloodshed.  Two of them capture a Nazi youth sniper during a brief exchange of rifle fire.  “The Bridge at Remagen” contained a similar scene.  A firefight breaks out in a peaceful pasture between Nazis and American G.I.s after one of our heroes spots a stallion and stops to admire it.  A Nazi officer fires his pistol at an off-screen Allied officer and mortally wounds him. Neither are shown in the same shot dramatically slinging lead at each other.  George Clooney swings a pick-ax at a brick wall.  Possibly the worst thing that occurs on screen is several actors smoke cigarettes.  The smoking is virtually pervasive.  Remember, Uncle Sam stuck cigarettes in K-rations.  Sometimes a rare profane word is uttered.  Otherwise, “The Monuments Men” amounts to a lukewarm World War II movie that loiters on the peripheral of the action.  At one point, two of our heroes are in the Battle of the Bulge.  Clooney never cuts loose with a machine gun at the Nazis.  Indeed, our starry cast spends more time talking about what they are going to do than riddling at the enemy with lead.  Occasionally, Clooney shows us the evil Nazis as they gloat over the stolen artwork.  Our heroes do undergo basic training.  At one point, a character stops crawling on an obstacle course and stands up while a G.I. is firing a machine gun.  Later, he is appalled when he learns that the soldier was blasting away with bullets instead of blanks!  “The Monuments Men” shuns conspicuous blood and gore as much as it avoids dramatic conflict. 

“The Monuments Men” suffers from several shortcomings.  First, characterization is one-dimensional.  We are given little insight into the heroes.  Each has a nominal scene that introduces them, but Clooney is more interested in what they are doing than who they are.  Cate Blanchett plays the most provocative character.  She served as a secretary to the Nazis and maintained a journal of their systemic looting of treasures from Paris.  Initially, she is imprisoned for collaborating with the Nazis, when she hated them.  After our heroes spring her she approaches them with suspicions until Matt Damon flashes his reassuring smile.  Second, the storytelling is episodic.  Various men go off on various adventures.  Third, the adventures lack pugnacity.  Nothing memorable either happens or is uttered.  Fourth, Clooney abhors dramatize anything.  A land mind scene in a cave could have yielded a little sweat and anxiety, but Clooney plays it strictly for amusement.  Fifth, the orchestral theme music fails to bolster the action and often sounds like it is undercutting it.  Watching “The Monuments Men” is the equivalent of fatigue duty.

FILM REVIEW OF "RED TAILS" (2012)

Anybody who has seen enough World War II movies knows that Hollywood has to resort to elaborate artifice to conjure up equipment which no longer exists in vast quantities. Each year attrition depletes the number of Allied planes, tanks, and war ships used in combat. Worse, most of the Axis equipment has been destroyed. The Spanish Air Force furnished the filmmakers of “Battle of Britain” (1969) with scores of vintage Nazi-era aircraft. Most moviemakers aren’t that fortunate. Now, every time that you see a World War II relic fly, you wonder if they haven’t matted in additional models, or relied entirely on miniatures. Virtually no World War II movie since the 1950s has used a Sherman tank. They rely on either the Pentagon for Cold War era equipment or mock up something that resembles a Sherman.

Freshman director Anthony Hemingway’s aerial epic “Red Tails” (** out of ****) qualifies more as a showcase for the digital computer generated imagery which can forge greater authenticity than a salute to the famous Tuskegee Airmen of the 332nd Fighter Group. This is the kind of movie that gives history a bad name. Clocking in at a torturous 125 minutes, “Red Tails” shows flair when it’s in the air but crashes and burns on the ground. The biggest stars in its gallery—Terence Howard and Cuba Gooding, Jr.,--ride desks, while a flock of relative newcomers wing it. Of course, any movie that involves historical racism in our enlightened era has to fly in circles. For the record, “Three Kings” scenarist John Ridley and “The Boondocks” scribe Aaron McGruder deploy the dreaded N-word once and then fall back on clichés as creaky as a period World War II combat actioneer. Worse, they make the Tuskegee Airmen behave like stock characters. Occasionally, Hemingway and his writers go off on tangents which weren’t necessary, such as a “Great Escape” subplot. Indeed, most of what happens here is a predictable as any second-rate war film. Essentially, “Red Tails” is “Gettysburg” with wings. Nevertheless, whenever they show the aircraft and the settings, you have to admire the extraordinary CGI that producer George Lucas’ special effects outfit, Industrial Light and Magic, has wrought. Now, if they’d only made the melodrama look as genuine as the aircraft and other equipment. Mind you, the train that gets blown up looks terrific!

“Red Tails” opens in Italy in 1944 as the black aviators, who prefer to be called ‘Negros’ rather than ‘coloreds,’ are flying antiquated P-40 Tomahawks on behind the lines missions. The Pentagon doesn’t believe that African-Americans are courageous enough for the task at hand. In fact, the film quotes a racist excerpt from 1925 Army War College study that said blacks were not brainy enough, ambitious enough, or audacious enough to survive in combat. Consequently, our heroes fly custodial missions, literally mopping up what the Army has bypassed on the way to the front. If these guys are lucky, they get to shoot up a Nazi truck, and these fellows are itching to see some real action. Indeed, one of the pilots, reckless Lieutenant Joe 'Lightning' Little (David Oyelowo of “The Help”), disobeys his squadron leader, Captain Marty 'Easy' Julian (Nate Parker of “Pride”), when they strafe a Nazi transport train. Everybody else swoops in from the rear and riddles the train while the Germans gunners unleash a barrage of flak. Miraculously, nobody is wounded. Lightning decides to attack the train from the front, however, before it can enter the safety of a tunnel, and he blasts it to hell and gone. Watching the locomotive and freight cars buckle and explode makes you think that “Red Tails” is going to be a fiery ride.

Unfortunately, nothing really happens until the second hour when the Tuskegee Airmen join the fighting over Northern Europe. Interestingly enough, it seems that the white American fighter pilots who fly escort for the B-17 bombers on raids have a tendency to abandon them when they spot German fighters. What the American fighter pilots fail to recognize is the wily Germans are luring them off when the bulk of their fighters shoot the bombers to ribbons. USAAF Major General Luntz (Gerald McRaney of CBS-TV’s “Simon & Simon”) asks Colonel A.J. Bullard (Terence Howard of “Iron Man”) about using his men to fly escort. Primarily, Luntz wants them to protect his heavy bombers rather than leave them in an aerial lurch. When Luntz promises that he will put the Tuskegee Airmen into brand, spanking-new P-51 Mustangs, Bullard takes him up on it. Initially, the white American bomber pilots don’t have much faith when they see their first black pilot fly alongside them. Things change drastically when the Tuskegee guys stick to them and thwart the Germans.

Sadly, “Red Tails” seems designed for kids rather than armchair historians who have cut their teeth on History Channel documentaries. The subplots about an African-American pilot who wines and dines an Italian babe, while another struggles with his alcoholism are the embarrassing fluff of a soap opera. Mind you, these are dullest bunch of guys in uniform that you’ve ever seen. Not one single character stands out, and the Tuskegee Airmen were pretty outstanding individuals. Despite its glossy $58 million budget, “Red Tails” doesn’t muster the dramatic clout of the Golden Globe-nominated HBO made-for-cable movie “The Tuskegee Airman” (1995) with Laurence Fishburne and Cuba Gooding, Jr. Moreover, Terence Blanchard’s orchestral theme music keeps everything in snooze control for the duration. Not only the Tuskegee Airmen but also the audiences deserve best than “Red Tails” delivers.

FILM REVIEW OF ''COMMANDOS'' (ITALIAN-1968)

"Autopsy" director Armando Crispino's historically inaccurate but nevertheless gripping World War II behind-enemy-lines, secret-mission thriller "Commandos" (***1/2 out of ****) qualifies as a rugged, gritty, suspenseful combat epic. This cynical Italian produced melodrama about a group of Italian-Americans masquerading as Royal Italian infantry so they can capture an oasis on the eve of the North African campaign in early 1942 removes any traces of glamour about war. Crispino and fellow scenarists Lucio Battistrada of "Crime Boss," Stefano Strucchi, and Dario Argento of "Suspiria" drew their robust screenplay from a short story by Israel filmmaker Menahem Golan as well as a story by Don Martin of "The Storm Rider" and Teutonic producer Arthur Brauner. Brauner is a landmark German filmmaker who refurbished the "Dr. Mabuse" franchise in the early 1960s. Lee Van Cleef of “For A Few Dollars More” delivers a riveting performance as a belligerent, battle-scarred Bataan hero who survived, along with two other companions, a death-defying ordeal. He relives the horror of the experience throughout “Commandos.” Van Cleef has a lot to sink his teeth into and he dominates the action.

The supporting cast is good, particularly Joachim Fuchsberger as Oberleutnant Heitzel Agen, nicknamed the professor because he studied insects at the university. Götz George shines as Oberleutnant Rudi, the type who could have excelled as dedicated Hitler Youth. The most unusual role—as it says something about the difference between the Allied armies and the Axis foe—belongs to actress Marilù Tolo who plays a prostitute named Adriana. Although she doesn't play a major part, she poses an interesting complication for our heroes. Interestingly, she points out that she canearn more money in the army camp than back home. The two characters who triumph over adversity at the conclusion were well known character actors. Giovanni Scratuglia played in many Spaghetti westerns, while Heinz Reincke played one of the two German pilots that strafed the beaches in “The Longest Day.”

The conceit of "Commandos" is that our heroes are descendents of genuine Italians, and Sergeant Sullivan and his right-hand man Dino (Romano Puppo of "Death Rides A Horse") have spent a month training them for the mission. Sullivan has little regard for most of them, but he has nothing but sheer contempt for his superior officer, Captain Valli (Jack Kelly of "To Hell & Back") who has never baptized in combat. Sullivan and Valli get off to a bad start when Sullivan describes their objective as “some harebrained mission you made up yourself.” Valli defends the mission and his knowledge. “I know this operation exactly, right down to the last detail.” Sullivan criticizes Valli’s shortage of experience. “You got a lot of bright ideas, Captain, but do you know what killing is—exactly—with these (makes gestures with his hands) and (brandishing a bayonet) this?”

Later, during the inevitable briefing session,Valli explains they will parachute near their destination. They will drop two or three miles from the objective and then take an hour to march to the Italian garrison and occupy it. Arriving after dark, they encounter soon opposition and have to resort to their machine guns instead of knives. Captain Valli refuses to watch Sullivan turn the raid into a massacre and he spares the lives of Italian Lt. Tomassini (Marino Mase of "The Five Man Army") and many of his troops. Valli warns Tomassini that the lives of his men depend on his cooperation with Sullivan and him. “I mean exactly what I say so you better get that through your head.” Germans from a nearby base show up for spaghetti and our heroes struggle to suppress any suspicious behavior, especially from Rudi who wants to locate his missing engineers. Sullivan kills the surviving German engineer, but during the struggle the German fires Sullivan's pistol. Everybody stops what they are doing and disperses into the open with guns drawn. A soldier apologizes for shooting at a jackal. No sooner do the Germans leave than the Italian hatch a plan of escape.

They rig up a hook that enables them to shut off the electricity in the barracks where they are being held. They jump the guards, disarm them, disable a couple of transports and take off in another truck to the German camp. Early the next day, Valli and Sullivan cut them off and gun them down. Meanwhile, the Germans are about to pull out and the German commanding officer lets Oberleutnant Heitzel Agen inform the Italians to blow up the wells before they leave. Initially, Agen believes that he is just going to visit an old friend. After Agen leaves, one of the wounded Italians makes it to the German lines and informs them that the Italians are impostors. Agen is wearing the headset and talking to his commandant when he learns this alarming news. Eventually, the Germans arrive and it turns into a pitched battle. Only one Italian and one German survive the firefight and they throw away their guns and march off into the desert at fade-out

The themes of "Commandos" include the inhumanity of war, experienced versus inexperienced combatants, battlefield shock, and the duty that an officer has both to his men and the mission. The irony is that the Germans and the Italians are depicted with greater sympathy than the tough guy Americans. The German soldiers get along with each other as do the Italians, but the Americans clash, principally Sullivan and Valli. Other instances of irony occur that heighten the philosophical mindset of “Commandos.” The ending summarizes the madness of war as depicted here. Allied command scrubs the mission that Captain Valli has carefully orchestrated and he cannot accept this change of mind. Surprisingly, Sergeant Sullivan refuses to obey higher authority. Consequently, "Commandos" concludes with the Americans exploding the water holes and fighting the Germans with tragic results for both Sullivan and Valli.

Mind you, the authenticity of the action doesn't bear close scrutiny. Most military
enthusiasts will recognize the flaws immediately. For example, the Afrika Korps tanks are not the genuine vehicles. Instead, they are repainted U.S. Army Chaffee and Walker Bulldog tanks with German insignia, and the M3A1 submachine guns that the Americans tote weren't available for another year. Allowances must be made, however, and the Cold War tanks overlooked since the German tanks were long since kaput, while the "Dirty Dozen" machine guns look cool. Incidentally, the first American commandos were the U.S. Rangers as portrayed in the James Garner World War II movie "Darby's Rangers."

The sun-scorched widescreen photography of "Taste of Death" lenser Benito Frattari makes this desert-locked minor war film look sprawling and the nocturnal actions scenes have a perilous, primitive quality. The strident music of composer Mario Nascimbene enhances the suspense, especially when Sullivan and his men search for a wounded German engineer who remains at large in the compound. Nascimbene makes superb use of classical music from composer Edvard Grieg, specifically "In the Hall of the Mountain King." Whatever the case, “Commandos” neither glorifies nor glamorizes combat. Fighting is a hard sweaty business. Sergeant Sullivan summarizes it succinctly to Captain Valli in an earlier scene. “Do you know what blood smells like, Captain? It’s a hot smell, and it can get things messed up, too, because most men die hard.”

FILM REVIEW OF ''SAVING PRIVATE RYAN" (1998)

Lately, when Hollywood produces war movies, they focus on the debacle of Vietnam. Not director Steven Spielberg! Instead, the incredibly versatile helmer of "Jaws," "Schindler's List," "The Color Purple," and "Jurassic Park" impales a patriotic chapter of American history on a bayonet with his graphically realistic but otherwise sappy "Saving Private Ryan." "Saving Private Ryan" (**1/2 out of ****) ranks as a second-rate World War II movie with a first-class cast and top-notch production values that pass inspection with some of the most savage combat carnage ever lensed. As demeaning as this criticism sounds, "Saving Private Ryan" is one of the top 25 World War II movies. Unfortunately, the film contains so many glaring historical inaccuracies as well as wholly improbable plot contrivances that you wonder what Spielberg was thinking when he made it. Since "Saving Private Ryan" swamped moviegoers with cutting edge combat action, Ridley Scott's "Black Hawk Down" and Sylvester Stallone's "Rambo" have eclipsed it with even greater cutting edge violence.

If the story had been as memorable as the kinetic, blood-splattered battle scenes, "Saving Private Ryan" might have been a classic. Essentially, "Saving Private Ryan" is a ten-star movie until the U.S. Army gets off the beach and into France where it devolves into just another standard-issue G.I. Joe war epic. Anybody who knows anything about combat movies will cringe the first time that they see the hero parading about in a helmet with the captain's bars painted on the front like a bull's eye. This is an egregious error! During World War II, officers didn't advertise their presence in this manner for fear that an enemy sniper would single them out for a bullet in the head. Okay, I'd dismiss this lapse of realism as a dramatic liberty except the filmmakers raise the same point. A seasoned dogface (Vin Diesel) warns a rank amateur to stop saluting the captain for fear that a sniper will shoot the captain down.

Dispersed throughout the movie is the usual quota of Hallmark speeches about valor, loyalty, and redemption. These platitudes add little dimension beyond the obvious to the purely physical rat-a-tat-tat. Spielberg could have trimmed much of this sappy dialogue and upgraded his movie. Running nearly three hours in length, this rowdy, often profane World War II melodrama creates a deeper impression with is grotesque special effects than with its drab, sometimes improbable tale. Consider the scene in the town when the wall collapses between the Germans and the GIs and they stand with their arms brandished screaming at each like a Mexican stand-off. Come on, give me a break, in real life, either side would have opened up on each other. Similarly, letting Steamboat Willie go is another incredible lapse of believability.

Told from the perspective of the infantry, "Saving Private Ryan" shares in the grand tradition of Louis Milestone's classic "All Quiet on the Western Front," Samuel Fuller's "The Big Red One," Lewis Milestone's "A Walk in the Sun," and William Wellman's "Background." Granted, none of them boasts the extreme combat that "Saving Private Ryan" commands, but they are solidly-made, engaging war movies with deeply personal stories. The muddled but high-minded screenplay by "Fly Away House" scenarist Robert Rodat follows a unit of U.S. Rangers on a dim-witted public relations mission to rescue an American paratrooper.

Captain Miller (Tom Hanks of "Forrest Gump") assembles a collection of stock characters to help him locate 101ST Airborne Paratrooper Private James Ryan of Iowa. Ryan (Matt Damon of "Good Will Hunting") has gotten lost behind enemy lines in the pre-dawn parachute drops that preceded the June 6th D-Day Normandy Invasion. When the War Department discovers that Ryan's two brothers bite the sand at Normandy and that the Japanese have killed a third sibling a week earlier, General George C. Marshall (Harve Presnell of "Fargo") decides to pull the last Ryan out of action. Along the way, Miller's G.I.s complain about the irony of risking eight lives to save one guy.

Before "Saving Private Ryan" grinds to its sanguinary conclusion, the Biblical theme of singling out an individual from a multitude for redemption grows tedious. Spielberg and Rodat, along with uncredited scribes Scott Frank and Frank "The Shawshank Redemption" Darabont, seem confused. Are they making a fiercely repellent anti-war movie? Or have the drummed up a gung-ho Hong Kong style, kick-butt actioneer? They pile on enough blood and gore for a platoon of war movies. Bullets zip and zing by the hundreds giving death an impersonal omnipotence. Presumably, the filmmakers hoped their grisly depiction of combat would eviscerate the memories of those flag-waving John Wayne propaganda sagas. The sadistic horrors that occur in "Saving Private Ryan" seems more commercially than philosophically oriented. We don't think so much about how terrible war is as how miraculous it is to survive.

The first 24 minutes of "Saving Private Ryan" dwells on the famous D-Day landing at Omaha Beach. Spielberg shows the baptism by fire that befell the seasick G.I.s as they waded ashore into a murderous Third Reich shooting gallery. This is the best part of this movie and guarantees it an immortal place in the ranks of all great combat epics. The last 40 minutes are pretty good and Spielberg has a surprise awaiting us at the end, but you won't like that surprise. After the scary, visceral D-Day prologue, the film settles down long enough for Miller to receive new orders. Eventually, Miller locates Ryan with a bunch of paratroopers guarding a bridge behind Nazi lines. Ryan refuses to leave his buddies in the lurch. Reluctantly, Miller and his squad prepare for the worst. This part of "Saving Private Ryan" has a lot of action, but it cannot compete with the 1960s ABC-TV show "Combat." Tom Sizemore makes a credible sergeant, but the usually dependable Edward Burns plays a soldier that would have been shot by his own men for disobeying orders. Tom Hanks' former teacher turned combat leader is a little too sentimental to be believable as is his inevitable demise. Many soldiers have commented--among them retired Joints Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell--that Miller and his men should have blown the bridge and retreated. Of course, had our heroes shown this much common sense there would have been no climactic battle.

Spielberg relies on elaborate visual gimmicks to strengthen his screen activities. The astonishing combat sequences have the compressed look of a video surveillance camera. The only thing that saves Spielberg is the politically incorrect way that the G.I.s shoot the surrendering Nazi troops. "Saving Private Ryan," for all its obvious flaws, still qualifies a movie any die-hard World War II fanatic should watch at least three times. It is still difficult to believe that for such a serious film, "Saving Private Ryan" contains several mistakes that ultimately undercuts its impact.

FILM REVIEW OF ''ENEMY AT THE GATES'' (2001)

Watching "Quest for Fire" director Jean-Jacques Annaud's World War II spectacle "Enemy at the Gates" reminded me of the "Sgt. Rock" comic books that I used to peruse as an adolescent when I was growing up in Mississippi during the Cold War years of the 1960s. Those fiendishly duplicitous Nazis in "Sgt Rock" always set up ingenious ambushes, concealing themselves in places where the unsuspecting American G.I.s would least expect to spot them, such as either disabled tanks or the rubble of fallen buildings. "Enemy at the Gates" keeps that Nazi skullduggery intact. Although French director Annaud, whose credits include "Seven Years in Tibet" and "In the Name of the Rose," condemns the Nazi, he goes to heavy-handed lengths near the end to rekindle our antipathy to National Socialism. You'll know the scene when you see it. I hate movie critics would give away too much of a movie plot.

Anyway, the aristocratic Nazi Major Konig (Ed Harris of "Stepmom") dispatched to kill our heroic Red Army sniper disguises a department store mannequin in a gray Wehrmacht uniform with a rifle. Talk about symbolism!? Weren't the Wehrmacht supposed to be the good guys, and the Nazis the evil villains? Although this large-scale, $80 million, World War II epic glorifies the marksmanship of real-life Russian sniper Vassili Zaitsev (Jude Law of "Cold Mountain") who bagged 300 Germans, Annaud condemns the Soviet ideology that Vassili defended. At the same time, no matter how magnificent the set design, costume design, and overall production of the film remains, "Enemy at the Gates" is painfully predictable, though far better than its American counterpart "Saving Private Ryan." Indeed, while both films feature snipers, "Enemy" achieves far greater realism and far less sentimental loquacity than Steven Spielberg's highly-overrated D-Day saga. Nevertheless, "Saving Private Ryan" and "Enemy at the Gates" both celebrate the supremacy of the individual.

Anybody that marches into "Enemy at the Gates" with the impression that the Nazis will triumph is hopelessly naïve, so Annaud's cinematic strategy of making this movie into a cat-and-mouse duel between sympathetic snipers falters in the last half-hour when the Nazi foe unveils his murderous colors. Ultimately, "Enemy" shares more in common ideologically with director Howard Hawk's patriotic 1941 film biography about World War I Tennessee sharpshooter Alvin York in "Sergeant York." York captured hundreds of German troops single-handedly by using his sniping skills in World War I. Warner Brothers produced "Sergeant York" during the tumultuous days of 1941 to drum up patriotism among Americans and give them somebody to emulate. Similarly, Vassili rise to prominence as a Red Army war hero occurs when a young Communist political officer Danilov (Joseph Fiennes of "Elizabeth" and "Shakespeare in Love") suggests the way to inspire morale during among the infantry is to reinvent Vassili Zaitsev as a hero for the army to worship. One of the problems about being a film critic and film lover is that you spot some things that nobody else would care about, like Danilov's "Battleship Potemkin" eyewear. Real cute, Jean-Jacques.

Anybody that has read anything about the brutal battle of Stalingrad in 1942 knows that it emerges as one of the savage battles of all time. Imagine Dante's "Inferno" as the genuine article, and you have a fair idea how devastating the fighting was. "Enemy's" opening scenes show literally thousands of young Soviet troops piling aboard filthy railroad cattle cars and freighted to the war-ravaged city on the Volga where most would die. As "Enemy" unfolds, our protagonist, young Vassili Zaitsev, finds himself among scores of comrades as their officers issue rifles to every other soldier while those soldiers-in-between receive a mere magazine clip of bullets. Basically, the Soviets hurled more men into combat than they had rifles to arm! Sounds rather anti-Soviet to me. If an individual survived, he had to participate in the gory art of battlefield salvage. In other words, taking rifles off the dead! Anyway, Vassili charges off courageously into the fray with a fistful of bullets and bides his time until he can acquire a rifle. ("Enemy" loves to flashback to childhood memories of Vassili in the snowy Urals lining up a wolf in the cross-hairs as it attacks a staked out horse. The outcome of this flashback is pretty predictable, too.) Meanwhile, Soviet officers gun down without qualm any infantrymen that retreat from the Nazi horde. Neither side emerges from "Enemy" as white-washed as the American G.I.s in "Saving Private Ryan." The Soviets aren't quite as diabolical as the Nazis. After all, remember who won World War II. When we first meet Comrade Khrushchev (Bob Hoskins of "The Long Good Friday"), he forces a high-ranking Soviet general to commit suicide because he cannot repel the Nazi invaders. Usually, this scene appears in only Nazi war movies where suicide is deemed the simple way out.

Basically, "Enemy" chronicles not only the cat-and-mouse showdown between Nazi Major Konig and Vassili, but also a love triangle with Vassili, Danilov, and a beautiful Jewish girl, Tanya (Rachel Weisz of "The Mummy") whose parents died at the hands of the Nazis. Indeed, Annaud manages successfully to blow soap bubbles amid bullets. Imagine "Jules and Jim" in Stalingrad and you know what to expect. The outcome is a predictable as who survives the duel, but Annaud gives it the kind of noble gravity that it requires to rupture your tear ducts.

Guys who like war movies where you can see authentic vintage bombers dropping loads on the battleground, especially the Junkers 87, aka "Stuka" dive-bombers, will love this war movie despite its romantic interludes. Had Annaud gone against the grain on certain plot elements and characters, "Enemy at the Gates" might have qualified as a contemporary classic.

FILM REVIEW OF ''WHERE EAGLES DARE''

Clint Eastwood probably killed more of Adolf Hitler's German soldiers in director Brian G. Hutton's "Where Eagles Dare" (**** out of ****) than he did western outlaws as either Sergio Leone's Man with No Name in the "Dollars" trilogy or criminals as "Dirty Harry" in his five Warner Brothers crime movies. Bestselling British author Alistair MacLean penned the splendid screenplay that he later converted into a much tamer novel about a team of elite British M.I. 6 secret agents that parachute into Germany to rescue one of the top-ranking officers with a mother lode of knowledge about the June 6th Normandy landings. This MGM blockbuster that runs 158 minutes is probably the greatest action-adventure movie with a World War II setting ever produced. We're talking wall-to-wall gunfire with more surprises and complications than most movies ever attempt. Richard Burton and Eastwood as in top form and they get considerable help and guidance from busty Ingrid Pitt and Mary Ure as undercover female agents. "Where Eagles Dare" is also notable for its percussive orchestral soundtrack by composer Rod Goodwin, who carved a niche for himself in World War II movie soundtracks with "633 Squadron," "Force 10 from Navarone," "Operation Crossbow," and "The Battle of Britain." Some war movies take an anti-war stance, but neither Hutton nor MacLean had higher ideals on their collective minds when they made this war-as-an-adventure epic. If you are a World War II movie buff and you haven't seen "Where Eagles Dare," then you need to get yourself a copy of this memorable massacre.

Admiral Rolland (Michael Hordern of "Royal Flash") sends a group of British commandos on a suicidal mission to rescue U.S.A.F.F. General George Carnaby, (Robert Beatty of "2001: A Space Odyssey") one of the overall coordinators of planning for the second front who is imprisoned in an impregnable mountain fortress called the Schloss Adler, a.k.a 'the Castle of the Eagles.' As it turns out, the Schloss Adler is the headquarters for the German Secret Service in Southern Bavaria. Colonel Wyatt Turner, DSO MC (Patrick Wymark of "The League of Gentlemen") informs them that the castle is named appropriately "because only an eagle can get to it." Apparently, on a night flight to Crete, Carnaby's British Mosquito was shot down by a wandering Luftwaffe Messerschmitt and the Mosquito crashed in near the town of Werfen. Major Jonathan Smith (Richard Burton of "Raid on Rommel"), Lieutenant Morris Schaffer (Clint Eastwood of "Kelly's Heroes"), Captain James Christiansen (Donald Houston of "633 Squadron"), Sergeant Harrod (Brook Williams of "The Wild Geese"), Captain Philip Thomas (William Squire of "Alexander the Great"), Sergeant Jock MacPherson (Neil McCarthy of "Zulu"), and Edward Berkeley (Peter Barkworth of "Seven Keys") are to parachute into Germany, enter the castle and snatch Carnaby.

One of the sergeants suggests at the briefing that the R.A.F. fill a bomb-laden plane and crash it into the mountain fortress. Rolland reminds him that killing an American general might anger General Eisenhower. No sooner have our heroes bailed out than one of them, the radio operator, is found dead in the snow with a broken neck. The Gestapo raids a tavern in Werfen and arrests the rest and takes them separately for questioning. Smith and Schaffer are hauled away together, but they manage to escape after their car crashes. Smith and Schaffer then climb atop the cable car that ascends to the Schloss Adler. Simultaneous, one of their undercover agents, Mary Ure, is being escorted by a suave but sadistic Gestapo officer in the cable car to work in the castle.

Once our heroes have gotten into the castle, Smith interrupts a meeting between high ranking German officers and General Carnaby. Smith proves beyond a doubt to SS-Standartenführer Kramer (Anton Diffring of "Heroes of the Telemark") and Gen. Rosemeyer (Ferdy Mayne of "The Fearless Vampire Killers") that he is a double-agent working for the Nazis as well as the British with a night-time call to another high-ranking German general.

Eventually, when it comes time to break out of the castle, Smith relies on Schaffer who plasters the place with trip-wire explosives. Once the Nazis realize what is going on, all hell breaks loose. "Where Eagles Dare" the movie surpasses MacLean's own novel; he wrote the screenplay and he provides Richard Burton with some of the greatest lines that you'll ever hear in the World War II movie. Indeed, "Where Eagles Dare" is the best World War II thriller that Burton and Eastwood ever made, with Burton making more W.W. II thrillers than Eastwood. The rest of the cast is first-rate and composer Rod Goodwin of "633 Squadron" provides a memorable score that ramps up the action and intrigue. At 158 minutes, "Where Eagles Dare" never lets up on either action or excitement. The surprises that crop up in the narrative match the sizzling action sequences. Clearly, this is Brian Hutton's most memorable film, far better than the action comedy romp that he went on to direct "Kelly's Heroes" with Clint Eastwood after "Where Eagles Dare" wrapped. For the record, the propeller driven plane that appears during the opening credits is vintage Nazi plane. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the fighter planes that Smith and Schaffer blow up in the last major shoot out sequence.

Hollywood has yet to equal "Where Eagles Dare."