Aylmer

This was my first experience with Gamera on the Sandy Frank VHS tape in 1991 at the age of 10, having just moved to a town with a much-better-stocked video store and not any friends to hang out with. Considering that the film is aimed squarely at kids, you think I'd be right in the middle of the target demographic. I remember popping this one in the VCR in between games of "Top Gun" on my NES and being dramatically unimpressed with the film, though thoroughly entertained by a few key scenes.

I'd been a kaiju fan since being introduced to Godzilla, Rodan, and the Gargantuas by 1980's TBS, but the Gamera movies all felt like a sad step down. There is a lot of camp value which appealed to me when laughing through them with my friends however, and in that respect Gamera vs. Gaos (or Gyaos now?) soars.

While the prior film with Barugon took itself awfully seriously (and surprisingly well), this movie goes for maximum ridiculousness by pairing Gamera with a giant laser-shooting anvil-headed bat creature. The "A-plot" of a road crew trying to get through the mountains is mildly uninteresting and weighed down heavily with many massively irritating characters all balancing each other out. We have a stubborn grandpa as the town mayor, two bumbling sidekicks for the lead work foreman, and an irritating little boy who likes to inject himself into everything.

Once the giant monster mayhem starts, there's plenty of laughs including a helicopter filled with suicidal scientists with zero concern for their own safety and the Japanese military's most asinine plan yet involving a blood-filled merry-go-round (?!). Some sections of the movie feature so much insanity that it goes by too fast to even properly absorb, counteracted by a lot of unfortunately slow scenes mired down in banal dialog and general stupidity. That said, I'll give it to the film for being decently directed and with earnest performances from most of the adults. Also it's still worlds better and more entertaining than the next few films in the Gamera series, which got cheaper and more comedic with each entry.

Underwhelming final Kinski/Herzog collaborative period piece which misses the mark at nearly every opportunity. While I love both FITZCARRALDO and AGUIRRE, this film offers a lot of the same meticulous and historically-authentic feeling absurdism only with an African twist but sadly little to offer in terms of entertainment value.

At first I thought this was going to be a fascinating adventure movie about a drifter who is given a fanciful quest by a diminutive barkeep, only to then find the movie submerged in Brazilian plantation life. It then finds itself in some potentially fascinating HEART OF DARKNESS territory, with said adventurer unconsciously on a suicide mission to restart the slave trade. Upon arrival in Ghana, the film switches gears yet again with Mr. Verde making a project out of fixing up an ancient fort to run as a base.

The film honestly is only about half as interesting as it sounds. We never get any real window into Verde or his motivations past the surface level. He doesn't seem to care that much about what happens to him yet loves to throw violent outbursts whenever anyone gets in his way. Is he merely cynically following orders or toes he have some kind of ideals? We never really get to know.

I was particularly upset that this big film with such a large budget didn't feature any action whatsoever. We get several minutes devoted to a subplot where Verde trains an all-female army to overthrow the ruler, but how the whole thing resolves itself feels more like a great big Herzogian troll upon the audience. Long before Rian Johnson, Werner was up to similar shenanigans of subverting expectations, ie. To always do whatever is the exact opposite of what the audience expects. It's sadly most surprising only in that every choice he made, Herzog went for the most dull.

Like most of his other parts in Herzog movies, it's really hard to imagine anyone other than Klaus Kinski in the part. Perhaps another "loose canon" actor like Harvey Keitel or Helmut Berger would have done okay, but this role feels very personal for Kinski. It doesn't even feel like he's acting half the time, and his anger, bewilderment and desperation seem more to reflect on his personal life as an insane actor at the time, rather than on the machinations of his character within the story. Today this film is worthy as a curiosity item and not much more.

I can certainly understand why a lot of people won't like it, mainly because it's pretty one-sided and morally gray at the same time, also bordering somewhat on disrespecting the soldiers and what they did in Vietnam. However this film emotionally grips and moves as very very other war movies do, balancing things out as both an exciting action movie and a shocking condemnation of the horrors of combat at the same time. There's certain unforgettable "magic moments" that bring this film up a notch, along with an excellent cast of up and comers who almost all went on to make a name for themselves in the business for the next few decades.

So what both bugs me and fascinates me with the storytelling here is that it takes a seemingly random platoon of American soldiers in Vietnam and splits them into three camps. You have the diametrically opposed groups of moral, but liberal drug-using soldiers (led by Elias), and then you have the immoral cynical, alcohol using soldiers (led by Barnes). Generally it's the "realistically"-minded soldiers who seem to be more effective in combat but also seem to commit the most atrocities because the ends justify the means, even if it means killing their own soldiers. Additionally you have the third camp of black soldiers who bleed over into the other groups, dabbling into both the idealism and corruption but generally staying out of things and dropping the occasional good question or words of wisdom.

The justification given by cynical Barnes as to why his ends justify the means is that idealistic dreamers will be a danger to the unit, but we never get to see an instance of that. This gives the film as a whole a very idealistic bias. There feels like a scene missing where one of Elias's idealistic men encounters a seemingly innocent civilian who he lets pass but goes and blows himself up in the base. As it is, the film makes it just look like Barnes is a psychopath with little justification behind his actions other than ego and paranoia, with all the grunts on his side just because they want to get away with various atrocities of their own.

I don't think morality generally boils down to black and white. Yes, this film needed an antagonist and Barnes is a fascinating character, but he's lacking in real justification for his actions. At the time, Stone was a lot more of a liberal idealist himself and certainly took a side, but I feel like his side was a little dishonest and unfair, making anyone who was fighting in Nam as a realistic seem like a monster.

But there's the rub of course when it comes to asymmetrical warfare and whether it can be truly defeated in a moral way. You can point to examples like the Boer War or the various colonial wars and see that brute force could subjugate a population, but in the 20th century, there were plenty of examples to the contrary including the various nations who fought to dominate Vietnam. We get a snapshot of why, as Elias puts it, "we are gonna lose this war" because when raiding a not-so-innocent village in a violent and brutal way, you lose the sentiment of the civilian population. However there isn't a lot of evidence that going to great lengths of winning the locals' hearts and minds wins wars either, as otherwise we'd have a lot more operations like DUMBO DROP to credit for winning a war in Southeast Asia rather than millions dying for nothing.

The film smartly keeps things internal and personal, with Charlie Sheen realizing the main character perfectly and taking on characteristics of all 3 camps. He bonds with Elias and sort of "becomes" him as the film goes on, learning a lot about human nature for better or worse. I give this film high marks through its biases and all as it gets one critically thinking about human nature and war in a way few other movies do, and not to the level of THE THIN RED LINE where it comes at the expense of providing an exciting experience. Things move quickly and the quiet moments always contain a level of tension or humanity which keeps the viewer hooked. It's amazing Stone was able to craft this so expertly being such a novice at the time, as he built a film I always come back to every 3-4 years.