FILM REVIEW OF ''THE MAN WHO KILLED HITLER AND THEN THE BIGFOOT" (2018)

The title of a movie may sometimes reveal more about its plot than you need to know.  Freshman writer & director Robert D. Krzykowski's atmospheric, historical epic "The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot" (*** OUT OF ****), starring Sam Elliot as the titular protagonist, doesn't tell everything.  As the legendary huntsman Calvin Barr, Elliot plays the individual who infiltrated the ranks of the Third Reich and put lead through Hitler's head. "Poldark" star Aidan Turner credibly portrays the protagonist as a younger man in the World War II scenes. Happily, Turner bears a reasonable resemblance to what Sam Elliot might have looked like 50 years ago.  After all, Sam is pushing 75.  After the Hitler shooting, Elliot takes over from Turner as the older Barr for the 1980s.  Meantime, Krzykowski cuts back and forth between past and present storylines, and he displays nimble flair.  Everything considered, though he appears in perhaps half of the movie, Elliot's sturdy presence turns "The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot" into an intriguing, occasionally exciting, meditation on loneliness and heroism.  The scene where Barr penetrates Hitler's security and confronts the Führer is suspenseful. Even better is the unusual weapon our hero assembles from various inconspicuous personal items to shoot him.  The gun is reminiscent of the weapon wielded by Francisco Scaramanga in the James Bond extravaganza "The Man with the Golden Gun" (1974). Despite all his medals and bravery, our hero doesn't live in the lap of luxury.  Of course, nobody knows he killed Hitler.  The U.S. government covered up his audacious deed when the Third Reich replaced the Führer with an imposter!  Moreover, as each imposter perished, Barr explained the Nazis lined-up another to maintain the masquerade.  This kind of inventive plotting distinguishes this artsy, little, independently produced film.  The palatable authenticity that permeates "The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot" is contrary to most current films.  Fate constitutes a fickle thing for Calvin Barr as well as for the audience, but the movie never degenerates into a maudlin melodrama.

Good fortune has not favored Calvin Barr in his personal ambitions.  He bides his time contemplating the past. Barr keeps to himself unless he ventures out to his younger brother's barbershop for a trim.  Barr's congenial brother Ed (comedian Larry Miller of "Undercover Blues") is only too happy to give Calvin a haircut.  Sometimes, they go fishing and drift idly around in a boat on a serene lake, but never utter a word.  Calvin experiences flashbacks from the Hitler assassination throughout, reliving those white-knuckled moments.  Meantime, he eats breakfast with Ralphie, his pet Labrador Retriever, slipping him a fragment of link sausage under the table.  Calvin lives alone, and Krzykowski often shows him pondering a small wooden box.  Neither the significance nor the contents of the box is divulged, but it is enough for us to know that it contains something valuable to him.  Calvin's mysterious box is comparable to the enigmatic attaché case in "Pulp Fiction."  You can guess all you want, but Krzykowski neither affirms nor denies what lies within it.  When he least expects visitors, Calvin finds himself chatting with an FBI agent nicknamed Flag Pin (Ron Livingston of "Office Space") and a Canadian government official Maple Leaf (Rizwan Manji of "Charlie Wilson's War") who pitch him a preposterous proposition straight-out-of-a-science fiction saga. 

In Canada, health experts have learned the fabled creature Bigfoot is carrying a deadly plague which could wipe out mankind.  Every animal that Bigfoot has come into contact with has died an ugly death.  Miraculously, Calvin is immune to the creature's virus, so he enjoys a modicum of protection.  Flag Pin and Maple Leaf want him to enter a fiery arena about 50-miles in diameter in the Canadian wilderness and shoot the Bigfoot to death.  Initially reluctant to undertake such an outlandish mission, Calvin changes his mind at the last moment.  The creature Bigfoot is reminiscent of the apes at the dawn of time in Stanley Kubrick's original "2001: A Space Odyssey," but it isn't a schlocky B-movie monster.  Calvin reports back that the creature doesn't have big feet.  Nevertheless, this creature is clever, and it almost leads Calvin off the edge of a cliff.    Earlier, Calvin's encounter with thieves outside the bar in his home town turns ugly and violent.  These three dastards brandish knives and pistols and demand his keys and his wallet. The methodical way Calvin disarms them and leaves them sprawled senseless on the asphalt would prompt the heroes of "The Expendables" film franchise to high-five him with admiration.

Sam Elliot's performance is laden with dramatic gravitas.  Not every actor can play a seasoned killer who convinces us that he is not only lethal but also remorseful.  Elliot doesn't shrink from performing his own stunts, and the filmmakers thrust him into situations that few 75-year old men should experience.  One stunning long shot of Elliot scaling a mountain with his bare hands with his rifle strapped to his back reminds us that the journey of the hero is fraught with constant peril.  Krzykowski keeps the actor on his toes. Mind you, everything Krzykowski does here as a filmmaker clashes with the common wisdom of theatrical tentpole releases.  Krzykowski's film suffers somewhat from the pervasive sense of melancholy our stalwart, tight-lipped hero experiences.  Bridging the 1940s with the 1980s, Zach Passero's polished editing makes these drastically different scenes appear integrated.  As Calvin's younger version, Aiden Turner has a brief, bittersweet romance with the heroine Caitlin FitzGerald.  However, they are never shown sleeping together. Seriously efficient at his tracking and killing, Calvin Barr lacks the control over his personal life that he has attained over his prey in his professional life.  The actor cast as Hitler-- Joe Lucas--is a dead ringer for Herr Schicklgruber!  Altogether, "The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot" qualifies as a derivative, but above-average, character study with nuance about an individual who without question made sacrifices to serve his country. 

FILM REVIEW OF ''HACKSAW RIDGE" (2016)

Although over twenty years have elapsed since he directed the Oscar-winning, Best Picture “Braveheart” in 1995, Mel Gibson hasn’t lost his touch as a topnotch director.  The pugnacious, bloodthirsty, fact-based, World War II spectacle “Hacksaw Ridge” (**** OUT OF ****) ranks as the first memorable battlefront epic of the 21^st century.  Hollywood hasn’t marched out a significant WW 2 film for inspection since 1998 when Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” landed on the silver screen.   Mind you, after the Allied soldiers stormed the Normandy beaches in France, the Spielberg saga degenerated into a soggy sandbag of a movie.  I grew up in the 1960s when Hollywood produced patriotic movies and TV shows about World War II by the dozens.  As far as I am concerned, “The Longest Day” (1962) still tops “Saving Private Ryan.”  While it didn’t wallow in the savagery of “Saving Private Ryan,” “The Longest Day” constituted a far more meaningful movie because it covered all sides of the combat.  Comparatively, “Hacksaw Ridge” takes place in the Pacific rather than Europe and depicts the bloody battle of Okinawa, where U.S. troops encountered suicidal Japanese soldiers entrenched in caves that eventually became their tombs.  Feisty filmgoers may complain that Gibson didn’t detail the entire sordid story.  For example, those flame-thrower wielding G.I.s not only incinerated Japanese troops, but also roasted the natives who had been forced to fight alongside with the Japanese.  Some island women committed suicide out of fear of getting raped, while others resorted to spears to defend themselves against the invading troops.  The ferocious, R-rated blood, gore, and aggression--visceral in every respect as it should be—that Gibson has staged serves to remind moviegoers that this 82-day battle constituted the bloodiest military campaign in the Pacific.  While “Hacksaw Ridge” shows us that “war is hell,” this wholesale carnage celebrates the heroism of a unique WW 2 hero.  Former “Amazing Spiderman” actor Andrew Garfield does a slam-bang job of playing real-life American Army Medic Private First Class Desmond T. Doss who made history as the first conscientious objector to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor.  The irony of “Hacksaw Ridge” is that it commemorates the exploits of a Seventh-Day Adventist who sought to save lives rather than destroy them.

Now, you’d think a movie about a conscientious objector would be very dull, but “Hacksaw Ridge” is far from dreary.  Robert Schenkkan, who wrote four episodes of the World War II mini-series “The Pacific,” and “Efficiency Expert” scribe Andrew Knight follow our protagonist, Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield of “The Amazing Spider-man”) from boot camp to his baptism under fire at Okinawa.  They also deal with his reckless youth when he almost killed his younger brother and later disarmed his drunken father after the latter had abused his mother.  The bulk of the action concerns the trials and tribulations that occurred after he enlisted.  Desmond informed his Army superiors that he had no use for guns, and he refused to drill with, much less discharge a rifle on the firing range. Desmond suffered the wrath of not only his military superiors but also soldiers that he trained with, and both went to extraordinary lengths to oust him from the Army.  Indeed, the Army tried to court-marshal him and his barracks buddies battered and ridiculed him because they figured that he was a yellow-livered coward.  Smitty Ryker (Luke Bracey of “Point Break”) was one of the barracks ringleaders who did everything possible to make life unbearable for Desmond.  Captain Glover (Sam Worthington of “Avatar”) and Drill Sergeant Howell (Vince Vaughn of “The Wedding Crashers”) were just as despicable, too.  Nevertheless, neither Desmond’s fellow soldiers nor his superiors had any luck in running him off.  He sticks out the worse of everything and goes into action as a medic.  When the troops get to Okinawa, they experience combat at its most tragic.  The Japanese never know when to stop and they live for the opportunity to kill Americans, even trotting out to ostensibly surrender but then pulling out guns and grenades to kill, kill, kill.  Just about every appendage of the human body is either blasted off or blown off.  Desmond watches grimly as rats gnaw on the decomposing bodies of American and Japanese soldiers.  Nothing about combat in “Hacksaw Ridge” is glamorous.  Everybody is shocked and surprised when Desmond ascends a cliffhanger escarpment, draped with a heavy-duty cargo net, and rescues one-by-one, 75 wounded soldiers during the night who had made his life a miserable hell in boot camp.  Suddenly, they reassessed this gawky looking lad and worshiped him like a saint.

In an interview with “Deadline Hollywood,” Mel Gibson explained what impressed him about Desmond Doss. “The guy didn’t carry a weapon, never fired a bullet, was a conscientious objector who thought it was wrong to kill under any circumstances. But he had the guts to go into the worst place you can imagine and stick to his convictions, armed with nothing else but sheer faith. Walk in and just do the impossible, which is courage under fire unparalleled because he didn’t do it in a split second or decision or moment. He did it again and again and again.”  Indeed, Gibson and his scenarists faced a gargantuan task in adapting Desmond Doss’s life. Usually, Hollywood embroiders facts to heighten the melodrama. Had the filmmakers adhered to actual events, “Hacksaw Ridge” would have seemed just ‘too good to be true.’  Lack of space prohibits me from going into detail about Doss’s life and the values that shaped him.  Most of those details seem wholly incredible.  Squeamish spectators may have difficulty sitting through the last half of “Hacksaw Ridge” when body parts start flying.  Meanwhile, bloodthirsty moviegoers may find themselves champing at the bit as Gibson fills the first half of with Desmond’s sudsy romance with his future wife, Dorothy Schutte (Teresa Palmer of “Lights Out”), particularly when he sneaks his first kiss and she slaps him. Altogether, “Hacksaw Ridge” qualifies as unforgettable from fade-in to fade-out.