DUELING MOVIES: Bravo Two Zero (1999) vs. The One That Got Away (1996)

 Today is the anniversary in 1999 of the release of "Bravo Two Zero".

 

 

 

                In January, 1991, during the Persian Gulf War, the British Special Air Service sent an eight-man patrol behind enemy lines to interdict Scud operations.  The mission went horribly wrong and three of the men died.  Four were captured and tortured.  And one got away.  The mission became famous in England and spawned several books and two movies.  It gets complicated because the two movies were based on books by two different squad members.  They contradict each other in significant ways.  But another book contradicts both of them.  It’s hard to know where the truth lies.  Keep that in mind when you watch the two movies.  I can’t go without saying that one movie stars Sean Bean and the other stars the actor who Bean replaced as Sharpe in “Sharpe’s Rifles”.

                “The One That Got Away” is based on the book by Colin Armstrong, writing as Chris Ryan.  It was written and directed by Paul Greenglass (“Green Zone”).  It stars Paul McGann (who was injured in preproduction for “Sharpe’s Rifles”).  It covers the mission from prep to Ryan’s arrival back at his base.  The mission is to locate Scuds and their communications.  They land in the night and hike to a ravine overlooking the MSR (main supply route).  Unfortunately, they are discovered and forced to make a run for it, with Iraqi forces pursuing.  They decide to go to Syria.  The second night the squad gets split with Ryan and two others taking a different route.  The movie covers both groups.  Both are on an odyssey with the cold weather as much of a problem as the Iraqis.  It’s basically a dual lost patrol movie. 

                “The One That Got Away” has a made-for-TV, low budget feel to it.  The cast is adequate, although most Americans will not be familiar with the actors.  McGann plays Ryan as a reluctant, rather than action, hero.  He’s the one who questions risky decisions by his superiors.  The movie does not avoid assigning blame and it feels like an honest portrayal of the mission.  The men do not come off as crack soldiers, which is surprising since they are SAS.  But keep in mind that it is Ryan’s version of what happened.  The production is fine once you get used to the cheapness.  The cinematography is not boring, but tends to rely on close-ups too much.  Even the combat scenes are tightly filmed.  Although far from graphic, the action is competently done with the Iraqis doing their imitation of Imperial Stormtroopers when it comes to accuracy.  The dialogue is standard.  The soldier banter is nothing special and there is less jargon than “Bravo Two Zero”.  

                “Bravo Two Zero” is based on the book by Steven Mitchell.  He wrote under the pen name Andy McNabb.  This is the name used in the movie.  It was directed by Tom Glegg who did the Sharpe movie series.  It covers the same time period as “The One That Got Away”.   The film begins with a cursory introduction to the men as they go off to war.  Andy (Sean Bean) speaks for all of them when he says:  “Every soldier hopes for a major war in his lifetime.”  They are elite soldiers, but have that frat boys vibe.  This means they party hard, prank each other, and love their mates more than their mates.  Their mission is to be dropped behind Iraqi lines to disrupt the MSR (main supply route) and hunt Scuds.  Piece of cake, right?  Wrong.  First, radio problems create foreboding.  Second, they are discovered by a patriotic shepherd boy and the trek is on.  They are chased by an Iraqi unit that includes armored personnel carriers.  The ensuing firefight proves that eight British commandoes can handle ten times their number in Iraqis (with no losses to the good guys).    Hell, they even counterattack to force the enemy to run!   A decision is made to head for the Syrian border.  Along the way, the unit gets separated into two parts.  The movie follows McNabb’s quartet.         

                As entertainment, the movie is pretty good for a made for TV production.  The acting is good by the ensemble with Sean Bean being his usual dependable self.  The other guys are appealing and the camaraderie is sincere.  They behave and talk like soldiers.  In fact, the soldier talk is so slang and jargon  intensive that you have to be familiar with the British military to understand a lot of it.  To make matters worse for your average American viewer, the accents are quite thick. (For my fellow Sharpe fans, Sean Bean gets to call one of the Iraqis a “bastard”.)  The action is good with realistic small unit tactics.  They use covering fire and advance in sections, for instance.  The movie is accurate in how many of the eight survived, but quite possibly exaggerated the expendable nature of the enemy soldiers. It does seem likely that McNabb “enhanced” his story almost as though he was writing a screenplay for a war movie “based on a true story”.  This is fine for the action lovers.  There are plenty of Iraqi deaths to not feel guilty about.  Speaking of which, the movie actually has a sympathetic Iraqi character in the form of a general who chases the unit and then shows his respect with some green hard candies (a running gag – in a war movie!)  He is the exception to the other Nazi-like Iraqi torturers.  Unlike “The One That Got Away”, all of the squad members are shown in a positive light.  This is the version of the story that fits the legend.

                Before you ask why British TV needed two movies about the same incident, it sure looks like “The One That Got Away” was made to bring the famous story to screen and then “Bravo Two Zero” was made three years later to put a more positive spin on the men involved.  It is eye-opening to watch them back-to-back because McNabb is the hero in “Bravo Two Zero” and is trashed in “The One That Got Away”.  Ryan pretty much blames McNabb for poor leadership.  He is also very harsh on Vince Phillips (who is portrayed as a whiner who gives up and dies when he gets frostbite on his hands).   I would assume the truth is somewhere in between.  Interestingly, although Ryan is credited with the longest escape and evasion in British military history, he gets virtually no coverage in “Bravo Two Zero”.  You have to wonder if that was revenge for the earlier movie.  Based on Michael Asher’s controversial revisionist book, it would appear that McNabb exaggerated his story.  That might explain why the movie is more entertaining.  But he is also critical of Ryan’s. 

                 In virtually every way, “Bravo” is superior.  It starts by providing character identifications for most of the men.  It is better on the preparation and plan.  It has better combat and a better flow since it concentrates on McNabb.  The interrogation is covered more completely.  However, my research has made me wonder if it’s better entertainment value came with “enhancements” in the truth.  For instance, there is a complete scene where McNabb and Warner shoot their way through a camp.  This scene does not appear in the other movie.

                This pairing is intriguing and I strongly encourage you to watch both.  We don’t have too many  war movies that cover the same event from different, contradictory perspectives.  They  tend to support the fact that history sometimes depends on eyewitness accounts.  But what if those accounts disagree.

Bravo Two Zero  =  B

The One That Got Away =  B-