In 1884, General Charles George Gordon (Charlton Heston) is sent to the Sudan to oversee the evacuation of Egyptians from Khartoum before it falls to the forces of the Mahdi (Laurence Olivier). Defying orders, Gordon remains in the city and leads a doomed defense. Even before his death, the British press lionised General Gordon, painting him as a modern day crusader, a lone defender of Christendom against the evils of Islam. In truth, he was an arrogant, erratic imperialist who made a bad situation worse at every turn, and was content to lead his troops to slaughter in order to become a martyr. But this film isn't interested in the truth. This is the romanticised legend of Gordon in all its historically inaccurate glory. As with most of Heston's epic roles, there's gravitas aplenty, yet very little character. There's scale, but no real spectacle thanks to Dearden uninspired direction. Worst of all is all the brown-faced characters, including a hammy Olivier as the Mahdi.
Rating: ⭐
Captain Louis Nolan (David Hemmings) has nothing but contempt for his colleagues in the shambolic British army, many of them drunk or idle aristocrats who purchased their commissions instead of earning them. He frequently clashes with his own superior, the boorish Lord Cardigan (Trevor Howard), which ultimately leads to disaster at the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War. Tony Richardson's employed every cinematic trick he could think of (including animation by Richard Williams) to bring this savage satire to life. While the likes of Tennyson portrayed the doomed charge as something noble and heroic, Richardson shows it for the avoidable disaster that it was, a tragic farce carried out by indifferent, petty and incompetent generals that this film has not a crumb of sympathy for.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Napoleon (Rod Steiger) escapes from exile on Elba and returns to France, prompting the Duke of Wellington (Christopher Plummer) to gather his forces and confront him at Waterloo. A joint Italian/Russian production that failed so badly at the box office it led to the cancellation of Stanley Kubrick's planned biography of Napoleon, which I'm sure would've been far more interesting than this. At first it seems like this is going to be a film about Napoleon and the 100 Days, but it can't seem to make up its mind what it wants to say about Napoleon, so settles for just letting Steiger run amuck. Then it seems like it's going to be a film about Napoleon and Wellington, but clearly wasn't all that interesting in Wellington (there's a reason no one ever makes films about him) or the dynamic between the two men. Finally, for the last hour it's just the battle itself, yet despite 17,000 extras and some impressive cavalry charges, even that feels lacking compared to the Austerlitz and Borodino of Bondarchuk's own War & Peace.
Rating: ⭐⭐
Attenborough's all-star epic, which features a script by William Goldman, chronicles the failure of Operation Market Garden, the ambitious plan by the Allies to end the war early by capturing key bridges in the Netherlands in order to cross the Rhine. On a technical level, this is an impressive achievement, an old school epic where everything was done with practical effects. On a narrative level, however, it lacks focus and ends up being as messy and chaotic as the operation itself. There are just too many strands to keep track off, too many famous faces fighting for attention. The best sections are the ones focus on the British paratroops trapped in Arnhem, dropped into a meat-grinder by indifferent and prideful generals, but the film keeps cutting away from that so a Hollywood star can have a glorified cameo. There's a good story to be told about Market Garden, but this film often gets lost trying to find it.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Archy Hamilton (Mark Lee) and Frank Dunne (Mel Gibson) are rival sprinters in western Australia who become friends and decided to join the army together, eventually seeing action in disastrous Gallipoli Campaign during the First World War. This is one of the films that helped make Gibson an international star, but please don't hold that against it because this is a stunning, haunting tale of lost innocence, set against the backdrop of one of the biggest calamities in military history, which remains an open wound in both Australia and New Zealand. The devastating final freeze frame will stay with you for days.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
One of the most well known bits of historical propaganda is that Spartans were these elite warriors, the best in the ancient world, who held the back the massive Persian army at the Battle of Thermopylae for three days with just 300 men. While it's true that there were only 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, they also had roughly 7,000 other troops from various Greek states to back them up, as well as about a thousand of their own slaves (who they routinely culled to prevent uprisings). But you won't hear any unfortunate facts like that in this film because Frank Miller and Zack Snyder buy into all that Spartan power fantasy nonsense and want you to believe it too. This is the ultimate Bush era movie, one that works overtime to be really stylish and cool (cinematographer Larry Fong is doing so much heavy lifting) so you don't think too much about how it is really just a right wing fairy tale about noble white Europeans with toned muscles and perfectly sculptured abs (and gorgeous wives to have graphic sex with so you know how heterosexual they are) defeating depraved brown skinned weirdos invading from the Middle East.
Rating: ⭐⭐
Mark Greig has been writing for Doux Reviews since 2011 More Mark Greig
Is 300 a historically accurate movie? No. Is it even remotely politically correct? Absolutely not. Is it what you could call "good"? Probably not. Do I side eye anyone who declares this their favorite movie ever, the same way that I do with Fight Club? Maybe a little.
ReplyDelete... Is it absolutely awesome? Yes. Yes, it is.