The Six Triple Eight: It delivers!

The Six Triple Eight (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, profanity, racial slurs and brief war violence

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.29.24 

Director Tyler Perry’s compelling, fact-based drama is a painful reminder that heroic deeds can get overlooked, when history is compiled by biased reporters.

 

New enlistees, from left, Dolores (Sarah Jeffery), Lena (Ebony Obsidian), Elaine (Pepi
Sonuga) and Johnnie Mae (Shanice Shantay) nervously wonder what awaits them.

In early 1945, during the waning days of World War II, the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion — known by its members as the Six Triple Eight — became the sole Women’s Army Corps of color to serve overseas during the war.

This was prompted by a bit of political pressure from Eleanor Roosevelt and her close friend, barrier-shattering Black educator Mary McLeod Bethune, who tirelessly crusaded for Black women to be allowed a more prominent role in the U.S. military.

 

Back in July 1942, after having graduating from Ohio’s Wilberforce College — with a triple major in physics, math and Latin, and a minor in history — and then teaching junior high school for four years, Charity Edna Adams enlisted in the Women’s Army Corps. By late 1944, she had risen to the rank of Major, becoming the war’s highest-ranking Black female officer.

 

She was selected to lead the Six Triple Eight’s 855 women on its overseas assignment: an “impossible” task that some of her blatantly racist white superior officers clearly hoped would prove too much for the battalion.

 

But that’s getting ahead of things.

 

Perry and co-scripter Kevin Hymel shine a welcome light on this riveting — and often astonishing — saga, which came to modern attention just a decade ago. (Absent some accidental research, it might have been forgotten entirely.)

 

Perry’s film is anchored by Kerry Washington’s powerful performance as Major Adams. She’s joined by a solid supporting cast: most notably Ebony Obsidian, as Lena Derriecott King (also an actual WAC).

 

The story begins stateside with Lena, who has fallen for the white, wealthy and Jewish Abram David (Gregg Sulkin) ... much to her mother’s disapproval and concern. Abram is unfazed; he’s madly in love with Lena, and doesn’t care what the rest of the world thinks. But he soon ships out to join the overseas war effort, after which she hears nothing.

 

No mail from him.

 

Blitz: A powerful, WWII-era character study

Blitz (2024) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, violence, occasional profanity and racism

Available via: Apple TV+

By Derrick Bang

Back in 1987, writer/director John Boorman’s semi-autobiographical Hope and Glory presented the London Blitz as something of a “boys’ own adventure,” focusing on children who were too young to understand what was happening, and viewed the chaos as oddly exciting.

 

Shortly after joining hundreds of similarly frightened Londoners seeking shelter from a
bomb raid, by fleeing into a subway, George (Elliott Heffernan) suddenly becomes
aware of something just as dangerous...

Writer/director Steve McQueen’s Blitz takes a decidedly different view.

The setting is London, September 1940; Hitler’s Germany has just begun the eight-month bombing campaign designed to terrify England into quick submission. (He sure got that wrong.) As one immediate result, Operation Pied Piper evacuated 800,000 children from urban centers to outlying rural communities, over the course of just three days.

 

McQueen’s film opens on a terrifying scene, as untrained and outmatched firefighters attempt to extinguish multiple blazes caused by the most recent attack. It’s noisy, chaotic and scary ... particular when the scene shifts skyward, as more bombs slowly spiral their way down. In a few brief minutes, McQueen and his filmmaking team sketch the horror of random death and destruction.

 

This prologue is replaced by brief random shots, concluding with a field of flowers, which slowly fades as piano music is heard. Working-class single mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan) readies her 9-year-old son, George (Elliott Heffernan), with a tattered suitcase. They live with her father, Gerald (Paul Weller), a doting man who radiates kindness and compassion; he’s the piano player. Fleeting flashbacks establish the tight bond between these three, and the deep love that Rita and George share.

 

She’s shattered. Ronan’s stricken expression is heartbreaking, her eyes clenched, in order to prevent tears.

 

George, on the other hand, is furious. He absolutely doesn’t want to leave, refuses to understand why he should, and feels betrayed when his mother resolutely hustles him to the train station.

 

“I hate you!” he snaps, pain in his face, as he breaks from her and runs into a train car. When she spies him through a window, as the train pulls away, he refuses to meet her gaze as she implores him to say a proper goodbye.

 

What follows is powered by two phenomenal performances, from Ronan and young Heffernan, both so solidly “in character” that we soon forget we’re watching actors; they become Rita and George.

 

As the train proceeds, McQueen hits us with the jolt we’ve been dreading ... because George is a mixed-race child. Two loutish boys in the seat behind lean over; one runs his fingers through George’s “unusual” hair. Heeding his grandfather’s advice about bullies, George stands up to them ... and they retreat in embarrassed silence.

 

“All mouth, and no trousers,” George scoffs, recalling his grandfather’s words.

 

(Love that expression!)

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: Jolly good show!

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for relentless violent content and some profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.19.24

This one has it all:

 

Taut suspense; superb direction and pacing; well-crafted characters played by a terrific cast; dry, mordant humor; and a jaw-dropping, war-era assignment that unfolds like Mission: Impossible without the gadgets, and is based on actual events related within Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s declassified memoirs, as detailed in Damien Lewis’ 2014 nonfiction book, Churchill’s Secret Warriors: The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII.

 

Gus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill, center) believes that he and his lads — clockwise from
left, Geoffrey Appleyard (Alex Pettyfer), Anders Lassen (Alan Ritchson), Henry Hayes
(Hero Fiennes Tiffin) and Freddy Alvarez (Henry Golding) — can seriously compromise
Nazi U-boat activities.

To be sure, director Guy Ritchie and his co-writers — Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson and Arash Amel — have, um enhanced these events quite a bit; that’s to be expected from the flamboyant filmmaker who brought us (among many others) Snatch, The Gentlemen and cheeky updates of Sherlock Holmes and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

But enough truth remains to make this one of the most audacious covert operations ever to emerge from World War II.

 

England is in dire straits as this story begins, with London enduring nightly Nazi bombing raids, and American forces unable to cross the Atlantic due to the persistent threat of German U-boats (that latter detail stretching the truth a bit). Determined to break this impasse, Churchill (Rory Kinnear) authorizes an off-books assault — dubbed Operation Postmaster —  proposed by Special Operations Executive Brigadier Colin Gubbins (Cary Elwes) and his personal assistant, Lt. Commander Ian Fleming (Freddie Fox).

 

(Yes, that Ian Fleming. He had quite the colorful career during the war.)

 

The details are to remain a secret between Churchill, Gubbins and Fleming: withheld, in particular, from War Office senior officers who favor trying to cut a deal with Hitler (!).

 

The plan: a clandestine black-ops mission — in other words, “ungentlemanly,” by the norms at that time — involving a small group of carefully selected mercenaries, tasked with destroying a crucial U-boat supply ship berthed in a neutral Spanish port on the volcanic island of Fernando Po.

 

Gubbins’ choice to head the mission: Major Gus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill), currently a guest of Her Majesty’s prison system.

 

(Well, naturally.)

 

What follows is a thrilling blend of The Dirty Dozen, The Magnificent Seven and, yes, the aforementioned Mission: Impossible. Once released and apprised of the assignment — when he isn’t cadging fine spirits, cigars and Fleming’s lighter (a cute bit) — March-Phillips assembles his team, each of whom would walk through fire on his behalf:

 

• Henry Hayes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin), an Irish navigations expert;

 

• Freddy “The Frogman” Alvarez (Henry Golding), a demolitions pro fully at home underwater; and

 

• Anders Lassen (Alan Ritchson, recognized from Amazon Prime’s “Reacher” TV series), an unstoppable killing machine, equally adept with knives and his beloved long-range bow and arrows, who has a charming habit of collecting the hearts of his Nazi victims.

 

Operation Mincemeat: Very well done

Operation Mincemeat (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for brief war violence, disturbing images and brief profanity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.20.22

World War II has long gifted cinema with a wealth of heroic, unusual and downright astonishing stories … but none is more bizarre or audacious than this one.

 

Having been fully briefed about the necessary parameters, North London coroner
Bentley Purchase (Paul Ritter, center) pulls out a cadaver that might suit the requirements
of Ewen Montagu (Colin Firth, far right) and Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen).

In early 1943, the Allies desperately sought a means to break the Nazi stranglehold on mainland Europe, but the only feasible route appeared to be invading Sicily and then pushing northward. Unfortunately, this lone option was tooobvious; Hitler also recognized it as the likely approach, and was fully prepared to thwart such an effort with the full might of the German army. The loss of Allied lives would have been incalculable.

 

A few years earlier, Lt. Cmdr. Ian Fleming — then assigned to Rear Adm. James Godfrey, head of British naval intelligence — had drafted what came to be known as the “Trout Memo.” (Yes, that Ian Fleming. Seriously.)

 

The memo — “Trout,” as in hoping to fool the Nazis hook, line and sinker — contained 54 suggested schemes designed to deceive the Axis Powers. Item 28 was a macabre ploy that Fleming lifted from 1937’s The Milliner’s Hat Mystery, one of several Inspector Richardson mysteries by British author Basil Thomson.

 

So, consider: A now-obscure novelist gives British naval intelligence the idea for a daring act of real-world espionage duplicity, as proposed by an officer — Fleming — who would go on to create the world’s best-known fictitious secret agent.

 

No surprise, then, that this legendary bit of WWII lore would appeal to director John Madden, who similarly played with the historical line between real and make-believe, in 1998’s Shakespeare in Love. Michelle Ashford’s engaging script is adapted from Ben Macintyre’s meticulously researched 2010 nonfiction bestseller of the same title.

 

The resulting film is fascinating. Ashford has done an impressive job of condensing the many key details, without losing track of the saga’s complexity … and while adding a few fictitious embellishments for dramatic intensity. (I’d argue they were unnecessary, but opinions might differ.)

 

The key players here are barrister-turned-naval intelligence officer Ewen Montagu (Colin Firth); Royal Air Force flight lieutenant-turned-MI5 counter-intelligence agent Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen); Godfrey (Jason Isaacs), who oversaw what eventually developed into “Operation Mincemeat”; MI5 clerk Jean Leslie (Kelly Macdonald), who played a key role in the scheme; and MI5 head secretary Hester Leggett (Penelope Wilton), whose talent for credible love letters also proved crucial.

 

The Zookeeper's Wife: Holocaust heroine

The Zookeeper's Wife (2017) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for violence, disturbing images, brief sexuality, nudity and moments of extreme dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.31.17

I marvel at the wealth of previously undisclosed stories that continue to emerge from the Holocaust, particularly with respect to the bravery of ordinary citizens who risked their lives while defying Nazi oppressors.

As Antonina (Jessica Chastain, seated on the stool) and her son Ryszard (Timothy Radford)
enjoy a rare peaceful moment with the Jewish refugees concealed in their basement —
from left, Magda (Efrat Dor), Urszula (Shira Haas) and Regina (Martha Issova) —
they're startled by an unexpected knock at the front door, upstairs.

New Zealand director Niki Caro, whose thoughtful and sensitive films have included The Whale Rider and North Country, has delivered an equally compelling adaptation of poet/naturalist Diane Ackerman’s 2007 nonfiction book, The Zookeeper’s Wife. The resulting drama, anchored by Jessica Chastain’s luminescent starring performance, is touching, suspenseful and at times flat-out horrific, revealing yet another layer of atrocities committed in pursuit of Nazi “cleansing” and “species enhancement.”

Ackerman’s book was constructed primarily from the unpublished diary of Antonina Żabińska (played here by Chastain), who with her husband Jan (Johan Heldenbergh) directed Poland’s unexpectedly progressive Warsaw Zoo during the years leading up to World War II. Most of the animals were kept not in cages but in habitats resembling their natural environments; numerous critters also wandered among or even lived in the spacious, cheerfully chaotic on-site home with Antonina, Jan and their young son Ryszard (Timothy Radford).

The fascinating complexity of Chastain’s performance is immediately apparent. On the surface Antonina seems vulnerable, slightly withdrawn and oddly fragile: a woman not quite comfortable with the trappings and protocols of so-called refined society. But in the company of the zoo’s wildlife she blossoms into something transcendent: an empathetic “animal whisperer” practically capable of communicating with all the birds and beasts.

We eventually learn the reason for Antonina’s wariness: She’s a Russian-born Pole, and as a child saw her parents killed by Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution. Trust does not come easily, which also explains her greater comfort among animals.

The Żabińska’s social life is lively, varied and bohemian, their circle of friends including artists, professionals and intellectuals, many of them Jewish. The subtle viper in their midst is Lutz Heck (Daniel Brühl), a colleague who visits frequently in his capacity as director of the Berlin Zoo. Even in these early scenes, there’s something predatory about Heck’s gaze, particularly when it lingers on Antonina; it feels as if Brühl’s eyes turn reptilian and beady.

Antonina makes the rounds of the zoo each morning on a bicycle, a young camel trotting alongside enthusiastically. Should a particular critter appear to desire company or need assistance, Antonina will kick off her shoes before entering the habitat barefoot, like some sort of forest-born wild child.

None of this is the slightest bit affected or risible under Caro’s careful guidance, and Angela Workman’s finely tuned script. Nobody here channels the childish fantasy of Doctor Dolittle; if Antonina has any cinematic ancestor, it would be Audrey Hepburn’s mysterious Rima, in the 1959 adaptation of William Henry Hudson’s Green Mansions.

Allied: Does love bind?

Allied (2016) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for violence, profanity, fleeting nudity and brief drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.25.16

At first blush, this feels like an old-style WWII espionage drama of the sort whose absence is lamented by longtime moviegoers — such as my parents — who often grouse that They Don’t Make ’Em Like This Anymore.

Shortly after adopting his cover identity as the devoted husband of Marianne (Marion
Cotillard), Max (Brad Pitt) fears that he may have been recognized by a Nazi officer: a
potential catastrophe that requires a quick solution...

Given the French Moroccan setting, stars with the wattage of Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard, and a swooningly romantic script that even name-checks Casablanca, one almost expects Bogie and Bacall to come strolling in from the surrounding desert.

Steven Knight is a terrific screenwriter, with solid experience in the crime and espionage genres; his highlights include 2002’s Dirty Pretty Things and 2007’s Eastern Promises. No surprise, then: He delivers a corker of a first act for Allied, and then swings the plot into an unexpected direction that cranks up the suspense.

Unfortunately, things get messy during an contrived third act, which piles eye-rolling coincidence atop unrealistic behavior, the latter from characters who’ve previously been depicted as far too intelligent, to suddenly turn brainless. Cut to a positively eye-rolling epilogue, and the film squanders the considerable good will that it has built.

Seriously, Steven ... what were you thinking?

In fairness, such climactic, over-the-top melodrama also is old-school, so Knight and director Robert Zemeckis obviously knew precisely what they were doing. I’m simply not sure that today’s savvier viewers will be as willing to forgive such theatrical excess, as was the case back in the 1940s and ’50s.

And it’s a shame, because the first 90 minutes are thoroughly compelling, and — yes — luxuriously atmospheric.

The year is 1942, and the film opens as Canadian airman Max Vatan (Pitt) parachutes into the desert outside of Casablanca. His emergency mission, orchestrated by the British Special Operations Executive (BSOE): to assassinate Germany’s visiting ambassador. The groundwork for this mission has been established by undercover French resistance fighter Marianne Beauséjour (Cotillard), who has spent weeks among her Nazi “friends,” waxing eloquent about the beloved husband soon to visit from Paris.

The handsome and affable Max looks and sounds the part ... to a point. As Marianne immediately notices, his carefully rehearsed accent is more Québécois than Parisian, which is a problem: French Moroccans wouldn’t know the difference, but he’d never fool Nazi officials who had spent any time in France.

Hacksaw Ridge: A cut above

Hacksaw Ridge (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for graphic war action, gore and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.4.16

Factual war dramas often are remembered for seminal sequences: the badly outnumbered British soldiers at Rorke’s Drift, who withstood the final onslaught by native warriors, in 1964’s Zulu; George C. Scott’s electrifying opening speech, in 1970’s Patton; and the Omaha Beach assault that kicked off 1998’s Saving Private Ryan, to name a few.

Once word spreads that Desmond (Andrew Garfield, right) refuses to wield or even touch
a weapon, Smitty (Luke Bracey, left) is the first to register contempt and hostility: How can
he — or anybody else in their division — trust a man who smacks of cowardice?

Indeed, the latter set a new bar for gripping, ghastly, battlefield intensity.

Until now.

Director Mel Gibson’s impressive Hacksaw Ridge is another reminder that, even with a long string of inspiring World War II dramas stretching back to the 1940s, fresh stories remain to be told. The best are those able to personalize the ordeal, by focusing on a few unforgettable individuals, or perhaps just one.

Hacksaw Ridge is the first dramatic depiction of American Army medic Desmond T. Doss’ experiences in the war: specifically his actions with the 77th Division — dubbed the “Statue of Liberty Division” — when it was ordered to take the Maeda Escarpment on Okinawa, as part of the Allied push to mainland Japan.

Frankly, I can’t understand what took Hollywood so long; Doss’ story screams for big-screen treatment.

Scripters Andrew Knight and Robert Schenkkan didn’t even have a mainstream biography on which to base their film treatment (although an obscure small-press book — Booton Herndon’s Unlikeliest Hero — was published in 1982). They were able to draw from Terry Benedict’s award-winning 2004 documentary, The Conscientious Objector. That title cuts to the core of Doss’ unique status: He was the only American soldier in World War II to fight on the front lines without a weapon.

As a Seventh-Day Adventist, Doss believed strongly that killing was against God’s Sixth Commandment. But he also insisted on serving his country in a meaningful way —obtaining a deferment, due to his employment at a naval shipyard, seemed cowardly — and therefore viewed a role in the army medical corps as a logical compromise.

It wasn’t to be that simple.

Gibson opens with a brief flash-forward to the chaos on Okinawa — a pointless foreshadowing of the carnage to come — and then takes us back to Desmond’s youth and young adulthood. He came of age in a household terrorized by his alcoholic father, Tom (Hugo Weaving): a man unable to forgive himself for surviving his WWI service, when so many of his friends and fellow soldiers died. Weaving makes Tom a forlorn and unstable — even dangerous — wreck, but not an entirely unsympathetic monster. In fact, Tom gets his shot at redemption, later in the story.

A couple of seminal events harden Desmond’s decision never to wield a gun, or take a life by any other means. We don’t doubt his resolve.

The Imitation Game: What price genius?

The Imitation Game (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, and rather harshly, for mature content and occasional sexual candor
By Derrick Bang

Mankind has an unfortunate tendency to devour its champions. Always has, likely always will.

We’re also not very tolerant of those who are different, whether in appearance or behavior. During times of crisis, such eccentricities are regarded even more suspiciously.

Despite indifference and outright hostility from some of his Bletchley Park colleagues,
Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) proceeds doggedly with the creation and
construction of a massive "thinking machine" that he hopes will break the German
"Enigma code" that has frustrated Allied efforts for so long.

Norwegian-born director Morten Tyldum’s handling of The Imitation Game employs shaming and ostracization as dramatic plot points: issues every bit as significant as the WWII-era predicament that brings young mathematician Alan Turing to the unusual code-breaking operation at Buckinghamshire’s Bletchley Park.

As scripted by Graham Moore and depicted by star Benedict Cumberbatch, Turing is a social outcast by virtue of his utter obliviousness to decorum and protocol. He affects a level of bland arrogance that infuriates everybody, yet remains utterly bewildered by how he is perceived by others.

This characterization places Turing squarely “on the spectrum,” to acknowledge the phrase du jour ... and I can’t help feeling that this artistic decision may have been propelled more by our current fascination with such characters — think Hugh Laurie’s Dr. Gregory House, or Cumberbatch’s own modern spin on Sherlock Holmes — than by authenticity.

This film’s opening credits are a bit deceptive, implying that Moore concocted this screenplay on his own. Only when we hit the closing credits can sharp-eyed viewers spot, in tiny print, a reference to Moore’s script being adapted from Andrew Hodges’ 1983 biography, Alan Turing: The Enigma. And while Hodges drew upon ample sources to confirm Turing’s impatience with bureaucracy and the grinding sluggishness of the military chain of command, Moore’s decision to re-cast this as full-blown autism is ... well ... historically suspect.

That said, it allows Cumberbatch to inhabit another of his fascinating, eccentricity-laden characters: a fresh performance that never ceases to be both fascinating and entertaining. Tyldum clearly recognizes this, choosing to open his film with Turing’s initial interview in the office of Bletchley Park Commander Alastair Denniston (Charles Dance). It’s a hilarious, impeccably timed display of rat-a-tat dialogue between an increasingly annoyed Denniston and the calmly indifferent Turing.

Indeed, such unruffled disdain later leads to the film’s funniest line, when one of Turing’s colleagues comments, in the aftermath of a particularly blunt display, “Popular in school, were you?”

Likely not, but that’s hardly the point; Turing’s unlikely presence at Bletchley Park, juxtaposed against the increasingly importance of his work, is what makes this film so engaging.

Unbroken: A bit underwhelming

Unbroken (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for war violence, brutality and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.26.14

Depicting the human spirit’s strength and indomitable resolve can be a tough sell in the visual realm of the big screen, because so much of that ability is an inward, fundamentally mental challenge.

Dismayed to have come to the direct attention of sadistic concentration camp guard
Mutsuhiro Watanabe (Takamasa Ishihara, right), Louis Zamperini (Jack O'Connell)
is subjected to a series of increasingly brutal and humiliating ordeals.

And yet we’ve been blessed, this month, by two powerful films that convey precisely that heroic struggle: the first one devoted to a quiet academic who refused to yield — Stephen Hawking, in The Theory of Everything — and now the equally authentic saga of a scrappy athlete driven by equal measures of grit and stubborn fury.

As with Eddie Redmayne’s bravura performance in Theory, director Angelina Jolie’s adaptation of author Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken is fueled by equally riveting work from British actor Jack O’Connell, whose until-now obscurity on these shores is certain to vanish forever. O’Connell is the heart, soul and raw guts of this film, and he achieves the near impossible: He genuinely makes us believe that fresh-faced, Southern California-based Italian immigrant Louis Zamperini could have survived — nay, triumphed over — a series of heart-stopping ordeals that clearly would have felled, and killed, lesser men.

Hillenbrand is the meticulous biographer who in 2001 dazzled readers with her first book: Seabiscuit: An American Legend, which went on to become an equally popular 2003 film. Hillenbrand acknowledges that her research into that famed horse frequently uncovered references to another famous Californian who “could give Seabiscuit a run for his money.” That led to an eight-year “chat” with Zamperini, but only by phone; Hillenbrand didn’t want to meet him in the flesh until after her second book was published.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption hit bookstores in 2010, subsequently spending 185 weeks on the New York Times hardcover best-seller list. It was a natural for film adaptation, and therein lay the challenge: how to bring Zamperini’s amazing story to cinema.

Jolie’s smartest move was casting O’Connell in the lead role, and the young actor absolutely rewards her faith. But while Jolie clearly approached this project with both passion and sensitivity, her directorial touch is too remote: We often feel like distant observers, rather than being intimately connected with these men, and their plight.

Fury: Much too angry

Fury (2014) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for profanity and relentless battlefield violence and gore
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.17.14

Classic World War II movies, absent the cynicism and despair that later infected so many big-screen depictions of the Vietnam quagmire, laced their stories with honor, chivalry, moral fortitude and an absolute respect for the chain of command.

Frightened and badly out of his depth, Norman (Logan Lerman, left) can't imagine that he'd
be of any use to the Sherman tank team led by Wardaddy (Brad Pitt). But this battle-weary
sergeant knows how to inspire his men, even a callow newcomer like Norman, and soon
the kid is executing Nazi scum with the enthusiasm of a seasoned warrior.

The Nazi enemy may have behaved like vicious, amoral swine, but our stalwart boys worked together with courage and righteousness, guided by the innovative strategies of battlefield stalwarts whose ingenuity helped trump sometimes superior forces.

This classic archetype continued for decades thereafter, building to modern classics such as Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan and HBO’s lavish miniseries, Band of Brothers, both of which gained their power from a rich tapestry of characters about whom we cared very, very deeply.

It would appear that this cinematic model has fallen out of favor.

Writer/director David Ayer’s Fury presents the latter days of the European campaign as the equivalent of an inner-city street fight between drug gangs, with the grunts on our side no better than the animals wearing the Nazi cross. The so-called “good guys” in this unpalatable story seem modeled on the thugs who tortured and humiliated Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib; early on, in fact, we’re granted a sequence of American GIs behaving just that badly with a captured German soldier.

It’s interesting — carrying this observation even further — that this story’s sole act of genuine kindness, of benevolent altruism, is offered by one of those aforementioned Nazi monsters. We could call it dramatic irony, but I’m not willing to give Ayer that much credit.

Three of the five primary characters in this film are one-dimensional brutes granted only a hiccup of actual characterization: superficial affectations implied solely by nicknames such as Gordo, Bible and Coon-Ass.

(Just in passing, I’d love to declare a moratorium on movies with characters who never seem to have real names, but instead are granted stupid monikers better suited to comic book villains. It has become a tiresome and frankly irritating cliché.)

Our other two protagonists, while graced with a bit more presence and personality, aren’t that much more likable ... but we eventually bond with them, to a degree, solely because we’ve gotta care about somebody in this mean-spirited mess.

And “mean-spirited” is this film’s prevailing tone: no surprise, since Ayer is the enraged scripter of nihilistic cop dramas such as Training Day and End of Watch, and earlier this year wrote and directed the offensively deplorable Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle, Sabotage. Ayer clearly doesn’t think much of his fellow man, and a little of that contemptuous vitriol goes a long way.

Given this new film’s 134-minute length, that’s a very long way.

The Railway Man: Journey to serenity

Railway Man (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for highly disturbing scenes of torture and war violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.25.14

It’s somewhat ironic that the “code of silence” shared by former British prisoners of war who survived their WWII ordeal, while forced to help construct the Siam-Burma railway, seems to have been echoed by filmmakers.

The calm before the storm: Patti (Nicole Kidman) has fallen deeply in love with Eric
(Colin Firth), despite knowing very little about his past. Details will emerge soon enough,
at which point we'll find out just how determined this woman can be, when it comes to
uncovering the truth.

Following the 1957 release of director David Lean’s classic (if fictionalized) Bridge on the River Kwai, nobody has re-visited those events on the big screen.

Ironic, because — as often happens — truth is far more powerful than fiction. And, in this particular case, even a bit stranger.

Director Jonathan Teplitzky’s adaptation of Eric Lomax’s memoir, The Railway Man, is a deeply personal film: by turns grim, heartbreaking and spiritually uplifting. It’s propelled by yet another impressive and emotionally complex performance from star Colin Firth, who appears to be cornering the 21st century market on delicately articulated psychological turmoil.

Merely to glance upon Firth’s face is to share in the grief of a man we don’t yet know; the invisible scars radiate from him in waves.

But Firth isn’t alone. He’s matched, scene for scene, by Nicole Kidman’s equally fine work. Her part isn’t as showy, but it’s just as crucial; she delivers the same persuasive power with small gestures. A tilt of the head, a half-smile that vanishes before blossoming fully. The beginnings of a comment, swallowed before any words escape her lips. A sense that this woman constantly walks on eggshells, lest she unknowingly awaken more dormant memories in the man she loves, but doesn’t yet know or understand.

Memorably deft performances, in both cases.

For the most part, the same can be said of scripters Frank Cottrell Boyce and Andy Paterson, who labored for years to turn Lomax’s book into a film. Their first act is a clever tease: deceptively light and sweet, almost a frothy romance, before dark storm clouds begin to smother the cheerful, sun-speckled tone.

The longer second act is horrific, in the manner of all powerful WWII sagas. The narrative may be far removed from the usual Western European setting, and the enemy faces may be different, but barbarism is universal. We wonder, once again, at man’s ability to debase and torture his peers. Not even war — not even this war — seems an adequate excuse for such spiteful cruelty.

The third act ... well, that’s where Boyce and Paterson falter a bit. But only a bit, and I’ll get back to that.

The Monuments Men: An unfinished sculpture

The Monuments Men (2014) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rating: PG-13, for relatively mild war violence, and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.7.14

What a disappointment.

Despite the considerable charm of George Clooney and his fellow scene-stealers, this is a flat and uninvolving film.

Knowing that time is running out, Stokes (George Clooney, foreground) and Granger
(Matt Damon, right) scramble to protectively wrap artworks prior to moving them to
safety. They're assisted by, background from left, Epstein (Dimitri Leonidas), Garfield
(John Goodman) and Savitz (Bob Balaban).

The fault lies with the graceless script, which leaves the impression that we’re watching the Reader’s Digest condensed version of a much longer miniseries. This two-hour film dips only briefly into a dozen or so potentially fascinating incidents, any one of which could have been expanded into a taut, exciting narrative; as it is, we get only the “calm” bits, leaving the impression that all exciting scenes were confiscated and dumped elsewhere.

Clooney deserves the blame; aside from starring and producing, he also directed and co-wrote the script with longtime colleague Grant Heslov. They’ve done a poor job of adapting the 2010 nonfiction book by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter: The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History.

Edsel also co-produced the 2006 documentary, The Rape of Europa, which covered the same territory in a vastly more satisfying manner.

Part of the problem is Clooney’s apparent desire to transplant the droll Ocean’s Eleven vibe into this grim World War II setting, while also conveying the barbaric behavior of Nazis who cheerfully practiced human and cultural genocide. It’s a bit jarring to smile at some witty banter between Bill Murray and Bob Balaban at one moment, and then, in the next, be confronted by barrels containing gold fillings extracted from the teeth of thousands of holocaust victims.

Mostly, though, I lament the utter absence of suspense. This is a fascinating, fact-based story that should have kept us at the edge of our seats. Clooney’s film, however, is a jokey affair that meanders throughout Western Europe: more travelogue than drama.

The saga begins in 1943, when Harvard art historian Frank Stokes (Clooney) briefs President Roosevelt on the pressing need for the Allies to avoid destroying European civilization, in their efforts to save it. By this, Stokes means that more care must be taken to preserve the cultural heritage of these various countries: their art and museums; their churches, cathedrals and synagogues; their architectural marvels.

As Edsel mentions, in the press notes, the Allies very nearly destroyed, entirely by accident, da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” in August 1943.