Ah, Memorial Day. The unofficial start of summer and a commemoration of the sacrifices of our brave armed forces. And what better way to celebrate the troops than by seeing their struggles memorialized on film? So, without further ado, a list of some recommended and not so recommended war-movie watching to get in the spirit of the holiday.
French and Indian War
LAST OF THE MOHICANS
Daniel Day-Lewis melts panties as Hawkeye, a white trapper who was raised by the ill-fated Mohican tribe. When he saves Cora (Madeleine Stowe) from a savage attack by the Huron tribe with a vendetta against her trapper father, it's a sea of raven-haired passion. I guess war is a turn on when a strapping British/Irish/Native American guy is sweeping you off your moccasins.
Revolutionary War
THE PATRIOT
Mel Gibson gives us a taste of the gore to come in Apocalypto in the one and only big Revolutionary War feature in recent years. In The Patriot, Gibson is Benjamin Martin, a farmer who is reluctant to join the fight after his experiences in the French and Indian War years before. But when the Redcoats end up on his doorstop (mostly in the guise of a surprisingly evil Jason Isaacs), Martin becomes a hero. The Patriot is a little shockingly bloody at times, but I still liked it.
Texas War of Independence
THE ALAMO
Texas. 1836. Billy Bob Thornton, Jason Patric, and Dennis Quaid must fight to get Texas away from Mexico and get massacred at the Alamo. I'm not so sure it was worth it, but if you watch the movie then I promise you don't have to go to San Antonio to find out. Deal?
Civil War
COLD MOUNTAIN
Jude Law plays Inman, the unlikely love of high-born Southern belle Ada (Nicole Kidman), who becomes a Confederate deserter when he goes AWOL after being near-fatally injured and then goes on a Ulyssean trek to get home to her. All I have to say is: I marry you, I marry you, I marry you.
GLORY
Starring Denzel Washington, Matthew Broderick, and Morgan Freeman in the story of the 54th Regiment, aka the first black regiment allowed in our armed forces, who fought on the side of the North to liberate their enslaved Southern brethren. As a proud Bostonian (Broderick's character, Robert Gould Shaw who led the regiment was from Boston), I am compelled to recommend this film.
GONE WITH THE WIND
Seriously, how can we not mention this one? I'm not usually one for movies that predate the late '60s, but Gone With the Wind captured my attention even as a teenager. Plus, high gas prices seem less of a big deal when you see someone who had to make clothes from her drapery.
World War I
FLYBOYS
A WWI aviation movie about the Lafayette Escadrille--Americans who volunteered to fly in Europe. Filled with CGI animation and led by James Franco, this one wasn't popular with the critics, including us.
IN LOVE AND WAR
Based on Ernest Hemingway's semi-autobiographical novel, A Farewell to Arms, about his love affair with a nurse who ministered to him after he was injured while working for the Red Cross in Italy. Call me schmaltzy, but I think a WWI love affair between Chris O'Donnell and Sandra Bullock is the perfect guilty pleasure.
A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT
A post-Amelie re-pairing of Audrey Tautou and Jean-Pierre Jeunet? How can you go wrong? Tautou stars as Mathilde, a polio-stricken WWI widow who refuses to believe that her husband (Gaspard Ulliel) has been killed. Also with Jodie Foster and Marion Cotillard (who will soon wow in the Edith Piaf epic La Vie en Rose) as fellow war widows.
World War II
MEMPHIS BELLE
Eric Stoltz, Tate Donovan, Matthew Modine, Sean Astin, D.B. Sweeney, Billy Zane, and Harry Connick, Jr. play a team of fighter pilots who specialize in looking cute in their flightsuits. It's war for teenage girls, and boy did I like it when I was one. It's the reason I know the song Danny Boy, for heaven's sake.
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN
The opening 15 minutes of Steven Spielberg's WWII epic depicts the storming of the beach at Normandy so graphically that it may forever be the bar against which all other war scenes are measured. The movie itself centers on the search to find the elusive Private Ryan (Matt Damon), whom the army decides to send home when his three other brothers all die in combat. Other players: Tom Hanks, Edward Burns, Giovanni Ribisi, Jeremy Davies, Tom Sizemore, Ted Danson, Dennis Farina, Vin Diesel, Paul Giamatti, and Adam Goldberg. Most importantly, it is every bit as good as they say it is.
SWING SHIFT
It's WWII from Rosie the Riveter's point of view, with Goldie Hawn playing Kay Walsh, a war bride who goes to work at a factory when her husband (Ed Harris) goes off to war. And then falls in love with Kurt Russell, which happened in real life, too.
FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS and LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA
Clint Eastwood's companion pieces on both the American and Japanese sides of the fight for Iwo Jima. Flags enters through the lens of the Pulitzer Prize winning AP photo of the marines and Navy corpsman who planted the U.S. flag on Mt. Surbachi; Letters follows the Japanese soldiers who went into battle knowing full well it was likely a suicide mission. Both received accolades in 2006, but word is the lesser known Letters is the better of the two.
PEARL HARBOR
How could we leave this one out? One of the most terrifying attacks on American soil and one of the most critically panned war movies of all time. I don't care what they say, though. Call it as saccharine as you want, but Josh Hartnett and Ben Affleck? Admit it: you'd have a hard time choosing, too.
Korean War
M*A*S*H
Perhaps there didn't need to be other movies about the Korean War because this one said it all so well. In case you have been living under a rock, this comedy by Robert Altman stars Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, Tom Skerritt, Sally Kellerman, and Robert Duvall in a story about the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. Informed by the mentality of the Vietnam War and based on Richard Hooker's novel, if you haven't seen M*A*S*H yet, you may be violating a constitutional ammendment.
Vietnam
APOCALYPSE NOW
Francis Ford Coppola's quintessential gory, trippy Vietnam epic, loosely based on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Apocalypse Now stars Martin Sheen as Captain Willard, a man with a mission to get into Cambodia to assassinate a renegade American colonel (Marlon Brando) at the height of the Vietnam conflict. Also starring Robert Duvall, Laurence Fishburne, Harrison Ford, Dennis Hopper and more. You've got to see this one - it's a classic. Even if there is an exploding cow.
PLATOON/FULL METAL JACKET
Okay, I can't really keep these two straight. One has Charlie Sheen and Willem Dafoe and is directed by Oliver Stone. The other has Matthew Modine and Adam Baldwin and is directed by Stanley Kubrick. Both of them are gritty, violent, in-the-trenches looks at the war from the soldiers' perspective. Not for the faint of heart.
BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY
Yes, another Oliver Stone Vietnam movie (hey, he was there, you can't exactly blame the guy). See Tom Cruise be angrier than when Matt Lauer asks him about anti-depressants, as real-life anti-war-Vietnam-vet-with-a-David-Crosby-mustache Ron Kovic, who was paralyzed from the waist down thanks to a bullet to the spine. Needless to say, the movie may have slightly gone over my head when I saw it at age 13.
GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM
Yay! Vietnam was fun! Especially when Robin Williams was on the radio. Okay, actually Good Morning, Vietnam has a lot more depth than that, and is a rare movie that blends Williams' skills with improv humor and deeper serious acting. And it has a young Forest Whitaker in it. Who remembered that?
RESCUE DAWN
All right, I'm pulling a little bit of a dirty trick on you. Rescue Dawn, which stars Christian Bale as Dieter Dengler, a U.S. fighter pilot who escaped from a Laotian prison camp after being shot down on his first mission, hasn't come out yet. It's based on Dengler's real-life experiences and it's pretty amazing. Rescue Dawn hits theaters on the 4th of July, so you should just take my advice and keep it on your radar.
Gulf War
THREE KINGS
Four soldiers (George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube and Spike Jonze) set out to steal some Kuwaiti gold bullion in the desert of Iraq. A surprisingly cool, hardcore movie that prompted me to announce after watching them cruise through the desert with music blaring from their car, "Oh yes, I remember doing that," and confuse everyone who was with me.
COURAGE UNDER FIRE
Denzel Washington is a lieutenant colonel charged with the task of getting to the truth behind a Desert Storm incident in which Captain Karen Walden (Meg Ryan) is nominated for the Medal of Honor. Co-starring Lou Diamond Phillips and Matt Damon, who dropped an unhealthy amount of weight to get into character, but nobody noticed because this was before Good Will Hunting put him on the map.
JARHEAD
War is dull. At least, that's the perspective of Anthony Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal), a marine sniper who spends days waiting around to get his big chance at any sort of action when he's sent off to Saudi Arabia. Based on Swofford's memoir of the same name. Also starring Peter Sarsgaard and Jamie Foxx, but the real star is a strategically placed Santa hat.
Somalia
BLACK HAWK DOWN
Did you even know we fought in Somalia? I'm not sure I did, but it turns out we engaged in a covert mission in Mogadishu in 1993 that went rather horribly awry when two of our black hawk helicopters were shot down in the city. This hardcore Ridley Scott war drama is a good, disturbing watch--and not just because it has Ewan McGregor in it. Although that always helps.
Did I miss anything? Let me know your favorite war movies at hhuntington@reelzchannel.com.