morganyossarian

Saw it this afternoon at home with the kids. Great fun- with a bit of an edge... brilliant for a wet afternoon. Lemmon acts as though he isn't trying and still steals the show. The love interest is interesting and the beleaguered officer who we all feel for is successful in the end. it's one of those second world war movies, like Stalag 17 or whatever that is light and patriotic at the same time.....

Silly would be the best way to describe this. There is a point where one of the camp inmates states that the shirts that the officers wear is all that seperates them from the anarchy out there with the rest of the prisoners.... there was no raw emotion, no anarchy, rather there was an abundance of civilised respectful behaviour throughout. Even the Japanese butchering of prisoners was couched in honour and tradition... everyone worked jolly hard to build the railroad that a lovely shiny puffer train was going to use... to invade India.

The one guy that gets beaten so badly that he is crippled ends up getting a lovely home made wheelchair... and the Japanese carry on feeding this man who is incapable of working???

Blah de blah... Good actors- silly script-equals a bad film.

People are people, regardless of where you put them. If a junk food junkie wins the lottery their idea of a good time is still a burger and chip and likewise a cultured person who has hit rock bottom still listens to Wagner in his cardboard shelter. When you go to war people don't all become noble or savage. But people adapt and twist themselves in order to fit the new order and way of things.

This film is about people adapting to the lunacy of a war, the stupidity of it all. M and M promotions are the logic of the lunacy, when they've traded the parachutes and the men are up in the planes without parachutes, then it is all explained away by the fact that if you don't get shot down you'll make a profit and if you do, well that's the free market.

The first world war had generals repeating the same insane plan, "over the top", again and again, regardless of the obvious lunacy of it all. This film is all about the same type of mentality, the same twisted logic that can make the likes of me and you fly over cities killing thousands of people below, whilst someone else tries to kill you. The chances of survival are less than 50% and all the time the number of missions you have to fly are increased. It is about what happens to people when they are at war and the stupidity that drives it all on. Think of football on Christmas eve in no man's land in the first world war, followed by the same people shooting at each other the next day.

And the one way out of this is protected by the rabid, but logical, catch 22.

A great, dark movie, I gave it 8 out of 10 and called myself Yossarian after the pilot who seeks a way out of the war.