DUELING MOVIES: The Great Escaper (2023) vs. The Last Rifleman (2023)

            “The Great Escaper” is an Oliver Parker (“Dad’s Army”) film. It was based on the story of Bernard Jordan, a 90 year-old Royal Navy veteran who absconded from his nursing home to attend the 70^th anniversary of D-Day ceremonies in Normandy, France. It was the last film for Glenda Jackson (who died nine months after the shoot) and Michael Caine (who announced his retirement after).

            Bernie Jordan (Caine) lives in an assisted living facility with his wife Rene (Jackson). Bernie leaves the home to make his way to Normandy. He meets some interesting people on his adventure, including some German veterans. He visits the grave of a tanker who he had befriended. The guy showed Bernie his girlfriend’s picture. Can you guess if he survived the landing? And why did Bernie promise the tanker that he was not doomed? Hadn’t Bernie seen any war movies? The movie uses flashbacks to remember the courtship of Bernie and Ray and to depict the meeting of Brendan and the tanker. It also intercuts between Bernie and Rene. Rene is in the middle of a media blitz as the press latches on to the story of an old dude on the lam. The title of the movie is what the press called Bernie.

            This is a very British movie. The best word to describe it is charming. Bernie and Rene  have an ideal marriage. Jackson actually does a better job than Caine, but they both are great. They are the only reasons to watch the film. The movie is a trifle, especially if you are not British. Jordan got his fifteen minutes of fame, but that did not cross the pond, as they say. He does not have a Wikipedia page. The plot sticks to the actual story well.  Too well. The film lacks any suspense or tension. For instance, nothing happens when he meets the Germans. That’s because nothing happened when he met the Germans. Bernie did not land on D-Day and he doesn’t stick around for the ceremony 70 years later. Sometimes a screenwriter should take some creative license.

            “The Last Rifleman” was released for streaming a few weeks after “The Great Escaper”. It was directed by Terry Loane. It is a fictionalized story about Bernard Jordan.

            The movie opens with a flashback to D-Day. Artie Crawford (Pierce Brosnan) and his best friend are in a British unit attacking a German position in Normandy. The movie then jumps 75 years to the elderly Artie living in a nursing home with his terminally ill wife. Artie is 89-years-old and has diabetes and heart problems. He’s no spring chicken, so when he asks the nursing home administrator for permission to go to the 75^th anniversary commemoration of D-Day, he is turned down. Although this is a rational refusal, Artie decides to sneak out and go anyway. The movie turns into a road trip movie as Artie interacts with various people on his way to the ceremony. He is befriended by a young man who shares a love of the music of Ennio Marricone, is aided by a woman (Clémence Poésy), meets a German veteran (Jurgen Prochnow), and encounters a black G.I. (John Amos) who was in a barrage balloon unit. He is chased by a newspaper reporter who smells a good story. After overcoming some obstacles, Artie reaches the cemetery where his best friend is buried.

            “The Last Rifleman” is a heartwarming movie that avoids being sappy. The movie is a showcase for Pierce Brosnan who at 70 was made-up to be a 92 year-old Artie. The makeup artist did an excellent job and in case you didn’t notice, there is a scene thrown in with the 70-year-old Brosnan to contrast the two. His Artie is pretty frail and infirm. He is far from feisty, but he is able to evade capture with the help of sympathetic individuals. The rest of the cast is solid. It was John Amos last role. Jurgen Prochnow plays an SS officer who tries to talk to Artie. Artie is not willing to let bygones by bygones. But they end up singing “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” together. (So that made the second time Prochnow has sung that song in a movie.)

            “The Last Rifleman” is based on the story of Bernard Jordan, but it takes significant liberties with the truth. Screenwriter Kevin Fitzpatrick sticks to the journey template, but he adds an interesting back-story for Artie. He was in a love triangle with his best friend and his future wife. He has PTSD from his best friend’s death and survivor guilt from marrying the woman who was meant for his friend. The trip to the cemetery brings closure for him.

            Which movie is better? They are both charming and sincere. Both treat D-Day veterans with respect and don’t make light of them. Both flashback to the cause of the main character’s

PTSD. The combat scenes in TLR are more compelling. Both take a road trip template. I found the people who Artie meets to be more interesting. The acting honors are hard to assign. Caine and Brosnan are wonderful, but I found that Brosnan stretched more. The casts are equivalent with sadly two cast members dying after their movies were completed (Jackson and Amos). If you are a purist when it comes to history, clearly TGE is the more accurate. But because of  that it is less entertaining than TLR. My recommendation is for you to watch both and make up your mind. You won’t regret either unless you want the elderly veteran to get revenge for his best friend’s death by killing a bunch of German veterans who attend the ceremony.

GRADES:  TGE  =  B-

                    TLR  =  B-

MACARONI COMBAT #6: A Place in Hell (1969)

 

               “A Place in Hell” is an Italian Macaroni War film set in WWII in the Pacific and starring the classic spaghetti warrior Guy Madison.  This one has a theme of war is a disease, so you can expect it to be deep and intellectual.  Madison plays Maj. Groves who happens to be a hard-drinking war correspondent.  He and a loose woman named Betsy are bar hopping in Manila when the Japanese begin bombing.  They escape in a boat piloted by a Marine.  He takes them to his island, but they find his unit slaughtered.  They rescue three captives. It is surprisingly easy to mow down the Japanese captors.  One of the captives is a convicted rapist/murderer who happens to be an anachronistic black Marine in need of redemption.  Later, they hook up with a British bloke named Rodney.  He has two native guides. One is a woman named Esperanza.  When Rodney asks him where they are headed, Groves responds with: “I’m like you, I’m on my way to hell.”  Spoiler alert:  So is this movie.  Rodney convinces the motley crew to participate in his suicide mission to destroy a secret radar installation.  If the Japanese get it up and running, they will conquer the Philippines.  But before any of that can happen, the group has to wander in the jungle and occasionally stop to talk.  In case you can’t tell the difference, the movie conveniently provides the same musical theme for the walking scenes.  Eventually, they reach the installation and we get the usual hip-shooting, machine-gunning of Japanese fodder.  Grenade pins are pulled with teeth.  The Japanese do not put up much of a fight.  But they do chase well.  Our intrepid survivors must overcome a climactic ambush which features the dastardly Japanese hiding under sand.  The complete surprise does not keep them from being slaughtered, of course.  But they do deprive Guy Madison of some of his cast mates.

               There is nothing noteworthy about this movie.  I am beginning to wonder if any Macaroni War movies are above average.  I would at least expect some campy verve.  Maybe some unintentional humor.  You get that only in the sand-hidden Japs scene and that’s a long way to go for a chuckle.  The performances are not laughable, they are just mediocre.  The combat does not make up for the long periods of boring marching and mumbling.  When the foes do come to blows, there is never any doubt who will win.  There is also little suspense in the mission because bizarrely, the Japanese are not able to figure out how to use the radar.  So, they don’t conquer the Philippines?  I had no idea I was watching historical revisionism!

 

GRADE  =  D

MACARONI COMBAT #5 - The Great Battla

 

               If you don’t want to watch “Winds of War” (all 883 minutes of it), you could substitute the Italian Macaroni War movie entitled “The Biggest Battle” (also known as “The Great Attack” or “Il Grande Attaco”).  It clocks in at 107 minutes.  You might think you are getting quality over quantity, but you would be wrong.  Speaking of quantity, it sure beats the vast majority of spaghetti war movies by having a large number of has-been American actors.  Four instead of the usual one!  And we’re not talking Guy Madison here.  In the first five minutes, a dinner party in Berlin in 1936 gives us Stacy Keach, John Huston, Henry Fonda, and Samantha Eggar.  Unfortunately, they seem to think they are appearing in a high school play. The plot will follow these four individuals and their families as they war hop.  Fonda plays American general Foster,  whose son is a disappointment to him.  John Foster enlists to prove himself to daddy.  German (not Nazi) Lt. Roland (Keach) is married to Annelise (Eggar) who happens to be a Jew.  She’s an actress, but she is not typecast as she appears to think she is in a comedy.  Huston plays a famous war correspondent.  He gets to chew scenery and follow what little action the movie has.  For the Italian audiences, the movie throws in a commando named Scott, played by spaghetti western stalwart Giuliano Gemma. He hooks up with John Foster to blow things up.  They end up facing off with Roland in a big tank battle in North Africa.

 

               If “The Biggest Battle” did not predate “Winds of War” you would think it was a knock-off.  It has the soap opera elements and takes a tour of war theaters.  And it has the all-star cast.  Unfortunately, it tries to pack in too much in the time allowed.  It hops around so much that the title card guy must have been exhausted.  Berlin, 1942 / Greece, 1942 / France, 1942 / England, 1943 / Normandy, 1943 / North Africa, 1943.  And that’s not all of the stops.  The movie also jumps around between characters, but we get just brief glimpses given the length of the movie.  In fact, the last twenty minutes is a rush to kill most of them off.  This is satisfying as the acting is so bad you don’t mind seeing them croak.  It is hard to care about any of them.  If the movie had been longer perhaps they could have squeezed more action into it.  What little there is is marred by inaccurate tanks and other vehicles, silly deaths, and lack of suspense.  And worst of all, some of the combat is bogus.  Having seen “Desert Battle” recently, some of the scenes appeared suspiciously similar.  In an act of great intellectual courage, I went back and rewatched parts of the earlier film and confirmed that this plagiarized!  Specifically, the climactic tank battle was the exact same footage as from “Desert Battle”.  I guess they figured “what are the chances anyone would see both of these movies?”  Only a person with no life.  Damn.

 

GRADE  =  D

MACARONI COMBAT #4: The Legion of No Return (1969)

 

               “The Legion of No Return” (also known as “Bridge Over the Elbe”) is a classic Macaroni War movie out of Italy.  It stars Tab Hunter five years after he starred in one of my favorite childhood movies – “Ride the Wild Surf”.  The movie opens with Americans being ambushed at a bridge.  Hunter plays Sgt. Richards.  He has been tasked with destroying the bridge.  He has a squad of six which includes a GI with a pet chicken.  Another is a sad sack who will get a chance to prove himself, since this is a movie.  With no plan, they paradrop and immediately take a nap.  They take a mansion away from some Germans and inherit the two prostitutes who were entertaining the krauts.  One of them donates her slip for a wounded American.  Hubba, hubba!  When a large German unit arrives, they massacre them in hip-shooting machine gun style.  They move on to the bridge and it turns out that the girls are able to kick ass as well as peddle it.  We get more bloodless slaughter of the grenade pin pulling with the teeth variety.  We’ll have less than the original six commandoes to worry about by the time of the big explosion.

 

               “Legion” is not the worst of the subgenre.  It’s lifted a bit by Hunter who does not just phone in his performance.  He was better as a surfer, though.  The rest of the cast is worthy of an Italian war movie.  The movie just lays there.  There is a lot of walking, then stopping and talking.  There is not a lot of combat and what there is is not adrenaline pumping.  Although most of the squad does not survive, they manage to take a lot of Germans with them and this by painfully average GIs.  The movie is not exactly dripping with reality.  For instance, the mission to blow up the bridge is crucial in keeping the Soviets from crossing the Elbe and taking more territory! Remember that the movie was made in the Cold War and they were godless commies back then.  Besides lacking in entertainment value, the movie is a pain to watch with its poor editing and dubbing.  It might have its charms for Tab Hunter fans, but straight guys who love war movies might want to pass on it.

 

GRADE  =  D