E Johnny prese il fucile

Let me say that I would NOT recommend this to anyone lightly. I feel quite confident saying that there are very few people I know who I think should see it.

It's all about the horror of war. The setting is WWI and involves a very young man, boy really, who has no appendages because of a grenade. The rest of the moving cuts between his horrific vegetative physical state with voice-overs of his thoughts and flashbacks to his rather limited life experiences and a few fantasies or inner monologues.

This was really a soul-shattering movie in a lot of ways. After watching it I couldn't get it out of my head for hours after hours. I couldn't' get to sleep until mid way through the next day. It is just relentlessly brutal in giving detail of true internal psychological torture, seeing a wasted life sacrificed.

I didn't read the book, which I've been told is even more dramatic than the film. I honestly can't imagine that. I don't think I could read the book. Parts of it make me think of "All Quiet on the Western Front" but in far more isolated ways. There's no glory here.

Donald Sutherland's Christ is a fascinating character and compelling. Joe's flashbacks are all meaningful and relate to the "big questions" he's trying to sort out that only seem to provide answer that torture him even more. The scene with his girlfriend early in the movie when the old man says "don't make a whore out of her" is profound in its delivery.

It is fairly artistic in a very dark sense. It's too heavy for some people. They will claim it was boring but that is only for those who have no understanding of the weight of the matters because it doesn't involve them. Make no mistake, this sort of thing goes on every day as there are wars every day.

I'm all about defending and fighting for personal rights, but if this movie were shown in every public school in the world there would be far fewer people willing to fight for the causes of others and the promise of a few more dollars.

I've never seen a movie that moved me so much but in such a sad way. It was perfect in its execution, but then again some lessons are better left unlearned.

A quadriplegic, who also lost most of his face from a WW1 bomb during that conflict, leaves us under no illusion of the futility of war and the insanity of those who lead us into them. As impacting a film as you're ever likely to see.

One of cinema's greatest achievements. The film is an incredible experience. The fact that you spend almost two hours watching the figure of someone buried under sheets and that we are intrigued by every second of it, testifies to the genius of the film. It's sad that most people remember this movie as the one Metallica made a video for. No offense to the band, but this JGHG is far more important than that. Dalton Trumbo's only directorial effort and it is flawless. The majority of the film is told in a voiceover and like "Twelve Angry Men" every thing takes place in one room. Prepare to be amazed.

I became an instant pacifist when I saw this movie at the age of 16. Prior to this, I had been a supporter of the war in Vietnam, and had fully intended to enlist when I was old enough. My father, a veteran of WW2 and Korea, took me to see this movie when it was first released, to help cure me of my delusion about the glory of war. He was very successful in that undertaking. While I haven't seen the movie in 34 years, I cannot deny it had a major influence on my life. I'll never forget the horror I felt in seeing that poor soldier trapped in his mind. I would strongly recommend telling anyone who is pro-war to see this movie. You may help turn on others to the horrors of war.

If you are at all squeamish than please avoid seeing Johnny Got His Gun. Not there is anything to see that is particularly, but Timothy Bottoms character in and of himself is one frightening example of what can come out of war and should it.

The unkindest cut of all is minutes before the armistice was declared in operation and the guns ceased, Timothy Bottoms receives a blast from a mortar shell. Everything that makes one relate to what's around is now gone from him, four limbs, the windows to the senses all gone. But more of his brain is intact than the doctors realize and the film is narrated by Bottoms trying to communicate and also his memories of much better times before the Great War.

Dalton Trumbo of the Hollywood Ten had been back working for over a decade now from the blacklist, but here he was not writing a script but also was the director filming his own novel. No doubt certain people were looking for a hidden subversive message. But the only message that Johnny Got His Gun delivers is war is very bad thing and does terrible things to some human bodies.

Of course the title is a past tense of that opening verse of George M. Cohan's period flag waver Over There. So many young men from so many countries marched to war with those songs thinking war was some kind of honor thing. Honor if there ever was any in war was lost in that conflict where automatic weapons, poison gas, and the tank came to the fore. Kids with 19th century ideals like Bottoms as we see his reminiscences came up against something that flag waving nostrums didn't take into account.

Bottoms is brilliant in the film that first gave him stardom and the rest of the cast performs well. Credit goes to Dalton Trumbo for a necessary, but harrowing piece of cinema.