100 BEST WAR MOVIES: 28. 84 Charlie MoPic (1989)

  

                It was shown on PBS.  (It was one of the first movies I taped with my cutting edge new VCR.  I showed it in my American History class a few times.)  I don’t think it spent much time in theaters and made less than $200,000.  It was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Festival and Best First Feature for writer and director Patrick Sheane Duncan (“Courage Under Fire”) at the Independent Spirit awards.  It was a “found footage” film long before “Blair Witch Project” made that style popular.  The movie was filmed in Southern California on a very low budget with unknown actors.

            84C is the military designation for a movie cameraman.  The premise of the movie is that 84 Charlie (Byron Thames) is tagging along on a long range patrol to chronicle what happens in the bush.  The entire movie is seen through MoPic’s lens and we only see him briefly at the end of the movie.  The mission of the five man patrol is to locate a North Vietnamese Army base camp in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam in August, 1969.  The mission is being led by a green lieutenant (Jonathan Emerson) who is called LT.  He is looking to get his combat ticket punched for promotion purposes and sees the motion picture (to be called “Lessons Learned”) as a career move.  He is not exactly welcomed by the veteran LRRP squad.  In fact, the sergeant who runs the unit (and continues to run it in spite of the LT) is downright belligerent and disrespectful.  OD (Richard Brooks) is hard core and makes it clear he thinks the presence of LT and MoPic will get his men killed.  The rest of the unit is heterogeneous in the classic tradition of small unit films.  Easy (Nicholas Cascone) is the radio operator who is close to the end of his tour.  He jokes around a lot.  They are the kind of lame jokes soldiers tell.  “I wouldn’t shit you, you’re my favorite turd” is typical.  Pretty Boy (Jason Tomlins) considers himself to be lucky, but is about to crack.  Hammer (Christopher Bergard) is the cocky M-60 gunner.  Cracker (Glenn Morshower) is a hillbilly who is a lifer.  He’s the guy who is usually called “Pop” in war movies.  His best friend is the African-American OD.   The five are very tight knit in spite of their various backgrounds.  The mission is pretty standard for a long-range patrol.  The men hump through the boonies until they reach the enemy camp.  They call in artillery and then move to the egress point.  This is when things get complicated and the movie becomes a “who will survive?” story.

ACTING:   B                 

ACTION:   C  (6/10)

ACCURACY:  N/A          

PLOT:  A-                     

REALISM:   A 

CINEMATOGRAPHY:    A

SCORE:   none 

SCENE:  the sniper

QUOTE: Easy:   I’m so short I could parachute off a dime.

            Although the movie is called a “found footage” movie, I prefer to refer to it as a movie that was filmed completely in POV.  This makes it unique among Vietnam War movies.  There are several excellent movies set in the war, but none does as good a job of putting you in the grunts’ boots.  The movie is as micro as you can get, but you will learn more about the soldier experience than any other film.  It is like a tutorial on what a mission behind enemy lines would have been like.  You are on the mission with the men.  The movie is excellent on the details.  There are many small touches that prove that Duncan was a veteran of the war.  For instance, the men use C-4 to heat their rations.  The uniforms, equipment, and weapons are realistic.  The dialogue is authentic and not forced like in many Vietnam War movies.  Duncan throws in a lot of slang (“there it is”) and it helps if the viewer is already versed in how the soldiers talked.  Much of the dialogue is the unit members ribbing each other.  Few war movies are better at portraying the unique comradeship of American soldiers.  Part of the film involves interviews with each of the men.  This helps with character development and gives various perspectives of typical soldiers.  For example, Easy was “volunteered” for service by a judge.  You care about the men and the dynamics in the unit are fascinating.  Although there is some stereotyping, the movie avoids the trope of the incompetent and/or frag-worthy officer.  The conflict between LT and OD is not trite or predictable.  The acting is surprisingly good for such a no-name cast.  Brooks (“Law and Order”) and Morshower (Lt. Col. Matthews in “Black Hawk Down”) went on to respectable careers.  For “cherries”, the cast acts naturally and there are no histrionics. 

            The movie is mostly talking and marching, but so is war.  It builds nicely to the action-packed concluding act.  Easy stops joking as things get really serious and there are some gut-wrenching deaths (including a great twist).  The movie does not pull its punches and can be quite emotional.  Given the budget, the action is not up to other Vietnam War movies, but the “fog of war” aspect of the jungle setting ameliorates this. Besides, the object of the film is more drama than action.

            Most lists of the best Vietnam War movies overlook “84 Charlie MoPic”.  It can be argued that it is not the best, but there can be no argument that it is in the top five.  It is a must-see for any fan of Vietnam War movies. 

THE 100 BEST WAR MOVIES: 29. The Dawns Here Are Quiet (1972)

 

 

                “The Dawns Here Are Quiet” is a Soviet film released in 1972. The title has a similar irony to “All Quiet on the Western Front”.  It was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar (losing to “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie”).  Director Stanislav Rostotskiy was determined to make a movie honoring females who served in the Great Patriotic War. A nurse helped him survive being run over by a tank in the war. The screenplay was based on the book by Boris Vasiliev. It was a bestseller in 1969. The book is considered one of the last “lieutenant prose”. These were books by lower-level officers who had served in the war. He wrote two other books highlighting patriotic contributions by female soldiers. Filming was done on the Karelian peninsula. It still showed signs of war damage and most of the crew had been in the war. The shoot was very difficult with cold temperatures and having to film in a swamp and forest. To better portray exhaustion, the actors put bricks in their backpacks.

              It is set in a village near Finland in 1942.  Sergeant Vaskov (Andrei Martynov) is in command of a unit that is noted for drunkenness and fraternizing with the village females.  His superior solves the problem by taking away his men and sending an anti-aircraft unit to replace them.  An all-female ack-ack unit!  Hey audience, Russian women could do men’s work. The girls laugh at Vaskov’s insistence on following regulations.  The village becomes like a girls summer camp.  They sleep together in a barracks.  They sing songs.  They dance with each other.  They take a steam bath together (with nudity, guys!).  But when there is an air raid, they kick ass.  They efficiently use their KPV multi-barreled heavy machine gun and shoot down a bomber.  Rita (Irina Shevchuk) coldly stitches a parachutist

            The first half of the film is entitled “In the Second Echelon”. There is a tonal shift from comedy to drama in the second half which was called “A Minor Local Fight” to stress that the movie is not about a significant incident. Lisa spots two German paratroopers in the woods and Vaskov decides to take her and four others to track them down before they can do whatever sabotage they are tasked for.  They cross a swamp and set up a strong defensive position to ambush the pair. Unfortunately, the pair turns out to be eight pairs.  Vaskov sends Lisa (Yelena Drapenko) back through the swamp for reinforcements. He and the remaining four will attempt to delay the Germans.  The movie now shifts to “who will survive?” mode. Get ready for some heart-tugging deaths.

ACTING:   B                 

ACTION:   C  (6/10)

ACCURACY:  N/A          

PLOT:  A-                     

REALISM:   A (there were female anti-aircaft batteries)          

CINEMATOGRAPHY:    A

SCORE:   C             

SCENE:  shooting down the German plane

QUOTE:  Vaskov:  War does not mean shooting better than the others. It means thinking better.

                “The Dawns Here Are Quiet” is not as renowned as other Soviet films like “Come and See” and “Ballad of a Soldier”.  The opening scenes seemed to confirm this.  Vaskov is a buffoon and the girls are giggly.  I was wondering if it was a comedy and whether it was truly a war movie.  Not that the first part isn’t entertaining.  The ladies are fetching and some are hot.  How often do you get a nude frolic in a steam bath in a war movie?  (A Soviet war movie at that.)  The director had to pursuade the actresses to perfom nude. He convinced them the scene would emphasize that when bullets hit them the bullets would be hitting female bodies. The same bodies that gave birth. Actually, only a war movie about the Red Army in WWII could realistically portray female soldiers like this movie.

  The air raid is a seriously good combat scene, but appeared to be an aberration in an otherwise fluffy movie.  Not that the movie was standard up to this point.  Early on a series of striking flashbacks kicks in.  The movie is crisply black and white, but the flashbacks are in color and slightly surreal.  They are used to give back-stories to the main characters.  For instance, Zhenya (Olga Ostroumova) had an affair with a married officer.  The cast is an ensemble and they are excellent, although only Ostroumova was famous at the time. By the end of the film, the five women who go on the mission have had their characters developed well.  It is a heterogeneous group.  There is the slut (Zhenya), the revenge-minded widow (Rita), the mousy (Lisa), the poetry lover (Galya), and the timid (Sonia).  More important is the character evolution of Vaskov.  He goes from a buffoon to a crafty leader.  He also shows commendable empathy for his charges in a big brotherly way.  And he turns out to be quite a warrior, as do the girls.  They participate in fire-fights using their Mosin Nagant rifles and captured German MP40s.

Director Rostotsky served in the army in WWII and went on to become a decorated film-maker after the war.  The movie is technically proficient.  The decision to show the flashbacks in a different style added pizazz to the movie.  The cinematography in the forest scenes is remarkable.  The biggest accolade I can bestow is that you do not realize without reflection how difficult it must have been to smoothly film the running about in the forest.  There is some POV and even some hand-held.  The lensing contributes to the fog of war aspect of forest fighting.  Rostotsky’s themes are apparent.  Female soldiers could be feminine and yet serve the Motherland effectively.  The movie is an homage to them.  They deserved it.

“The Dawns Here Are Quiet” is a must-see for anyone interested in Soviet war movies.  It belongs in the discussion about which is the best of this subgenre. It is no surprise it is beloved in Russia. It was at the top of the box office in 1973 (66 million Russians saw it) and polls have shown that it is the most popular film about WWII. This certainly can be credited to being very appealing to female viewers. But that is not because it pandered to women. It was based on actual heroism by females in the Red Army.

All the Young Men (1960)

                The Korean War is sometimes called the “Forgotten War” and that refers to the fact that Americans wanted to forget about it. American’s did not want to be reminded about a war that ended in a draw and was very frustrating. It was a far cry from the “Good War” – WWII. Korean War films, with a few exceptions, never caught on with the public. The ones made during the war mostly resembled WWII movies. The first one, “The Steel Helmet”, was a good film, but it was low budget and resembled a Western as much as a war movie. “Retreat, Hell!” (1952) did something you rarely saw in WWII movies – it depicted Americans retreating. “The Bridges at Toko-Ri” emphasized the futility of the war. But both movies, while bleak, still showed American soldiers fighting bravely. “All the Young Men” was made seven years after the war and had to tread new ground to make an impact. Director and writer Hall Bartlett (his “Zero Hour” was parodied in “Airplane!”) wanted to make a film with a message. A disciple of Stanley Kramer (“Judgment at Nuremberg”), he decided to tackle racism, specifically reactions to integration. Clearly, Bartlett was inspired by Kramer’s “The Defiant Ones”.  In 1949, President Truman had used an executive order to integrate the military. Despite howls from Southerners, the mixing of blacks and whites in units was a success. Starting with “The Steel Helmet”, Hollywood routinely put blacks into the films, but stayed away from the racial tensions that undoubtedly occurred. Bartlett’s film crossed that line.

                The film is set in North Korea in October, 1950. American forces are battling to take the port city of Wonsan. A platoon (actually, more like a squad since there are only 12 men)  is sent to hold a farmhouse in order to block an enemy movement through a strategic pass. The white Lt. is mortally wounded early and before he dies, he turns over command to Lt. Towler (Sidney Poitier). Towler is reluctant to accept because he, and EVERYONE else in the platoon feel that the veteran Lt. Kinkaid (Alan Ladd) should be the obvious choice. This is the first clue that the script is going to manipulate the situation to push its message. Kinkaid grumbles, but Towler is forceful in establishing himself in command and he backs down. For plot purposes (a phrase I could use at the beginning of every sentence in this review), Kinkaid does not want to hold the farmhouse, although that is clearly their orders and the battalion is counting on them.  The real problem will come from a stereotypical Southern bigot named Bracken (Paul Richards). There is no universe where this character does not appear in a movie like this. Bracken not only rocks the boat at every opportunity, but he proves to be a vile human, even without the racism. He is beyond redemption. The rest of the unit is heterogeneous. There is the class clown (comedian Mort Sahl), the singer (James Darren), the Indian, the medic, and the hunk (boxer Ingemar Johansson). Do not expect all of them to survive. Especially the guy who pulls out a picture of his wife. 

                Once the unit reaches the farmhouse, which has a woman in it, the movie becomes a hold the fort scenario. The North Koreans are the Indians. Moments of lame banter and singing by Darren are mixed with combat full of fireworks. Actually, the format is talk – dysfunction – fight, repeat. The action is decent with plenty of grenades and pyrotechnics. There are some surprisingly not fake looking tanks. Kinkaid and Towler make a good pair, so add buddy film (specifically “The Defiant Ones”) to the influences. Guess who gives Kinkaid a blood transfusion. (It’s a shame Dr. Charles Drew did not live to the see the film.) Will the cavalry arrive in time? Stick around to see if Bartlett eschews that cliché.

                It is hard to be harsh on a movie whose heart is in the right place. It is a strange movie because while it is full of cliches and stereotypes, the central premise was ground-breaking. It’s a shame it was marred by some ridiculous moments. I have made it clear that one of the few false notes in “Hell Is For Heroes” (1962) is the comedy routine by Bob Newhart. Mort Sahl has a similar scene. It is cringe. And then we also get Bobby Darren doing the teen idol sings a song routine. Where the hell did he get a guitar from?  On the other hand, Sidney Poitier. The movie doesn’t get made without him. Credit should also go to Ladd, who was apparently the only star that was willing to play the role.

                “All the Young Men” is slightly above average for a Korean War film. It benefits from being an important film.  You can’t say that about more than a few Korean War movies. It acts as a window into how the armed forces were on the cutting edge of civil rights in the early 50s. If you find it quaint, I suppose that is a good thing.

GRADE  =  C