revtg1-2

I served my time in Korea. Five years after I came back old time school mates of mine were being drafted for Vietnam. I later heard their stories over quarts of beer and doobies. This movie IS their story. I was sitting on my couch watching the big ambush scene and it scared the hell out of me in my own living room. The scene where Brian Dennehy tells Lt. Catuto that 19 year old kids in Korea checked their rifle sights by shooting down Korean farmers came home to me. My brother, who fought from the first of the Korean war through the Chosen battle, told me the same thing. This movie has it all. The boredom, the terror, the frustration, the slaughter, the sadness, the futility. And it is real. It starts out slow but when it kicks in it gives no quarter, cuts no slack and takes no prisoners. If you ever carried a rifle in a combat zone at night alone you can relate to it. But even if you have no recollection of the Vietnam war era you can still sense the reality.

The English language has its limitations. A sorcerer could not conjure up enough negative adjectives to properly describe this two hour and 38 minutes of film wasted on an absurd and insane movie about an absurd and insane man and the seemingly hapless people he intimidates and berates with his insanity. After the first thirty minutes you began to wonder if the movie will be interminable. Then you realize the answer is yes. And during the endless boredom of its interminability it is fragmented, senseless, pointless, dull, ridiculous and insultingly banal. If you have not seen this movie I envy you. I wish I had not. While watching it you may keep thinking soon, soon it will make sense. A plot, a point, a focus will emerge and there will be an actual story instead of a piecemeal collage of scenes of insane raving and insane acts. The producer and director could have saved time and money by going to an inane asylum and following the most violent and deranged inmate around with a camera. And it would have made more sense.

Starts out interesting. Prison scenes are real enough. George Raft carries the "nice guy who just made a mistake" to the point that he appears soft. Then William Holden chews up too much scenery with his angry young man act. Then Raft gets a martyr complex and throws himself in front of the gang's guns to save his kid brother. Marc Lawrence, stereo-typed as a meanie and low life hood, turns in his usual good role. He had to go to Europe in the 50s to be taken seriously as an actor. Paul Kelly's talent is wasted but he does his usual solid performance. The director, Lloyd Bacon, wasted a good cast. Just before he died William Holden told this story about George Raft during an appearance on the Tonight Show shortly after Raft died. Holden was brand new to Hollywood and a little nervous and insecure. Lloyd Bacon was an egomanic and a bully. One day on the set Bacon went berserk and began berating Holden, shouting in his face in front of the cast. Raft ran over and got him by the lapels and said, "That's a man you are talking to, not a dog. If you ever talk to that young man like that again you'll answer to me. You got that?" Bacon became a little more polite. But not a better director.