hugh.blanchard

It is a gripping story that is told about the efforts made to make use of that stationary aircraft carrier in the middle of the Mediterranean. It is also poignant that Alec Guinness should play the part of a reconnaissance pilot because it is just this ruse that the British used to pretend that they hadn't broken the Italian and German ciphers thus enabling them to sink all the Gerry troop ships and always be just in time everywhere. A lame performance by the cast is diverted by the backdrop of a desperate situation on a tiny island that has been invaded by every great power since anyone can remember. If Ultra hadn't done it stuff these people would have been run over even though the Axis forces would have lost the war in the long run.

Right from the start the title suggests heroism and a great deal of fighting in this second world war drama. Far from it, it showed the effects that war and the social schism that is created by removing men from their families and loved ones has on everyone involved.

The heroism is not just from the men that are fighting but the families they leave behind. This film shows how complicated relationships can be in these extreme circumstances.

The acting is superb, especially from Aldo Ray as Pfc Andy Hookens. He takes up with a New Zealand war widow during maneuvers in the pacific before Saipan. In a moving scene at her father's farm where her brother, who was also killed, had buried an ax in a tree before leaving for war, he took the Axe and felled the tree. This showed commitment more than words could do. The IMDb ratings shown for this film highlight the different values taken by men and women. Men it seems just want to see blood and gore and the women the human side, well the latter get it is spades here.

There is no propaganda regarding any particular enemy, it could be applied to any foe. The film tries to show that the fighting units are fighting for each other and do what they are trained to do without any political agenda. There is no Gung-Ho attitude shown at all which is the reserve of those who have not seen action, even though this term was coined by Lt. Col. Evans Carlson of the 2nd Marine Radier Battalion in 1942. Let us hope that such values also hold today.

I just wish they had discovered Rosie Perez by then who would have been more believable than Julia Roberts. That would have been a great movie. Julia Roberts is too much of a model type who just cannot carry it off even though her acting is always excellent.

The whole movie does give a sense of the decadence of the 1980s, which dates it wonderfully. Obviously, this project was on the cards and in production before the crash of the 90s. It's incredible people really thought it wouldn't end.

I'm not sure I could live a life where everyone around me just sees dollar signs and I think that someone who does would be shallower than Richard Gere's hard but soft man, which comes across as a little artificial.