So last year's miserable retelling of H. G. Wells' classic The Time Machine was a bad choice of DVDs. Tonight's choice was a rather poor selection as well.
Windtalkers was a better movie, but overdid the point that war is a nasty, bloody, gory and deadly business. Thankfully, this picture didn't rekindle the simplistic Kill the Japs! specter of earlier films and propoganda. To compensate, there were a lot of battle scenes, and it was pretty clear that the Marines were fiercely attacking their opponents because (1) it was kill or be killed, and (2) dammit, their guys killed our buddies. Unfortunately, John Woo overcompensated and condensed the story about how the Navajo helped the Marines take Saipan into a two hour shooting gallery.
One good note is that movies like this make it crystal clear how much progress the US has made in modern warfare since 1944 (excursions in Somalia aside). Weapons are much more precise. Communications and intelligence is much, much more accurate. And casualty rates to achieve military objectives are greatly reduced from where they were in WWI and WWII. But war is still a nasty business, even with JDAMs, cruise missiles and GPS.
But a movie that graphically drives the point that war is hell is probably the last thing you want to watch instead of bomb-to-bomb coverage with Peter Jennings/Dan Rather/Tony Snow/Tom Brokaw.
(Our other choice tonight was The Buena Vista Social Club. That DVD was voted down because it was (1) a documentary and (2) primarily in Spanish.)
Re: The Buena Vista Social Club
delegatrix on 2003-03-22T14:06:05
We have two conflicting things going on - a small TV and people with poor eyesight. It was just hard for some to read the subtitles.
