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Reviews
The Fallen (2004)
Was there a point to this?
For starters, I once met the director when he was going to WW2 re-enactments with a period movie camera and making videos of the events which looked DARNED good. I really wish he'd kept that up. Because as much as I applaud what he accomplished on a clearly "next to nothing" budget, when I popped out the DVD, I just wondered why I sat through almost two hours of nothing. There's no real plot to speak of, you don't really care what happens to the characters (maybe the Italian troops and some of the Germans), and the ending is yet another "art film" commentary on the futility of war. I could have told someone how it would end once I got through the first ten minutes. I KNEW the Germans would have a few heroically volunteer to fight to the death, I knew most of the Quartmaster GIs would be killed, it was just too darned obvious! And while I'm on the subject, I was shocked to see so much of the Axis side done well, yet the GI side done comically. All the character development was clearly for non-English-speaking roles. The GIs simply got shafted hard in this film. And I can't help but wonder if they even had someone on the set who understood how the US Army works? The phrases, terminology, actions, were clearly written by someone with no knowledge of the American military at all. Had I now known who had directed this film, I'd have sworn it was directed and written by a German...
The Dukes of Hazzard (2005)
Should've left this one unmade...
Like many here, I was a Dukes of Hazzard ("DoH") fan when I was a kid. Mostly, that's because it's aimed at kids in its simple plots and lots of action and car chases. No slam on the show, but let's call them as we see them. Heck, even as a kid, I couldn't understand why Bo and Luke couldn't carry guns due to their probationary status, yet they had lots of dynamite around. Still, it clicked. I believed Denver Pyle as Uncle Jesse. I thought it was cool when Daisy was given her Jeep (I don't remember by whom though) as no way the Boar's Nest paid her enough to buy it. Sure, it was a Bubble Gum show but the show clicked. That's why it carries its fan base just as Star Trek or Gilligan's Island. I looked forward to this movie. Really, I did. I waited to see it on DVD because my wife (who isn't a fan of the show) didn't want to go see it at the theaters. I'm glad now we didn't go then. I watched it last night with her, and a half hour into it, she left to go to the grocery store. I can't say I blame her for that. That's not to say the movie is without good points. We finally get to see why a Confederate flag got onto the hood of the car and the horn plays, "Dixie" (it turns out that Cooter is a Civil War Re-enactor) and the reactions people would probably have to seeing and hearing the car these days. And as a big fan of the movie, "Super Troopers," I laughed hard to see one of those bits re-created in the film. And I liked the fact that they did film it in the South, as seeing a TV show taking place in Georgia but filmed in California always galled me, growing up just 15 miles from Georgia's state line. But other than that and some pretty decent car chase scenes, I wasn't impressed at all. I liked the fact that in the show, Uncle Jesse was a reformed moon shine runner, trying to keep his nephews and niece on the straight and narrow, straying only when Boss Hogg gave them no choice. Breaking the law was something he abhorred. While not exactly standard family value fare, it still clicked. Now, Uncle Jesse is a pot-smoking moon shiner with a still that James Bond would be impressed with. Daisy is in on it too, and the Duke boys make coin running shine and trying to hook up with every unattached female in Georgia. Uncle Jesse also just goes around telling foul jokes while being in car chases. The only hint of any responsibility toward the Duke boys is near the end, where he demands Luke to hand over his driver's license. Whatever lovable qualities the character had was crushed by this film. Denver Pyle is probably rolling in his grave right now. In the show, Daisy was tough, yet didn't live to show herself off to get what she wants. She was, well, a tad more innocent about her hotness than in the movie. Jessica Simpson has the prerequisite hotness needed, but the acting ability of a William Shatner on crack. Mercifully, she shakes her tush more than she tries to act. Roscoe Coltraine was a cartoon character come to life. I can only say that the movie version was a cartoon character of that. At least James Best's TV version was funny to watch. And Boss Hogg? Okay, Burt Reynolds didn't play it over the top like the TV version. I'll give him that. But to think he started the "Southern boy thumbing his nose at the law" character with "Smokey and the Bandit," well the irony is just too hard to swallow for me. The Bandit has BECOME Smokey, I guess. The ending is, in all fairness, about as implausible and moronic than many of the original show's endings, so I can't fault them there. This is NOT a kid show like the TV show I remember. It's also way to sophomoric to be enjoyed by many adults. It doesn't even have what a good cult hit needs. Frankly, it's just a poor movie.
The Red Badge of Courage (1951)
By vets, FOR vets
Keep in mind that many people involved with this film were WW2 vets. That's important, as I think it made a HUGE difference in how the film came out. Audie Murphy was the most decorated American soldier of WW2. Bill Mauldin wasn't a line soldier, but he'd been in the infantry before the war. He knew what the daily life of a grunt was all about. And director John Huston had directed films in WW2, standing at the front lines in Italy to do so. They all knew what war should look like. Had these people not been involved, I think this movie wouldn't have rung true as it did then and does today. Sure, the weapons, most of the uniforms and equipment are horribly wrong (this was in the days when a "trapdoor" Springfield rifle and Indian War era equipment was just fine for a Civil War film), but this film must be viewed on it's acting and photography. They got it across what it was like to be SHOT at, and how it felt to be terrified in battle, better than any film since, "All Quiet of the Western Front." Yes, it's seriously abridged and condensed (quite a feat when you consider how short the book is), but it gets the spirit across just fine. It's not perfect by any measure, but you'll never be able to get such a group together to re-make this film and have ring as trued as this classic.
Up Front (1951)
Mauldin deserved better
Bill Mauldin was a cartoonist, and arguably, the best one WW2 produced. His work resonated with soldiers in ways no other GI cartoonist ever did, as he WAS a line Infantryman with the 45th Division right up until they went into action in Italy. He knew the lives of the grunts and his work showed it. His work deserved so much more than this film. Thats not to say it's bad, it's actually quite funny in places, but his cartoon work simply didn't translate to film. I just can't imagine ANY director who could've pulled this off, living or dead. We get a lot of visual set ups just like the cartoons, and at first it's fun to watch, but it eventually denigrates into a soupy plot where the boys are trying to dodge the MPs in an Italian town. The ending would warm the heart of any GI, where the MPs finally catch up with Willie and Joe, who have since stolen a truck filled with black-market combat boots and winter jackets, and are speeding them to the troops on the line who need them the most. When the General catches up, and all hope is lost, he turns the MPs into infantrymen and orders them into the line for failing to protect the supply lines. I'm a HUGE Mauldin fan. Even I didn't like this film much.
Alien Siege (2005)
Bloody awful
I've never written one of these before, but this truly brain-dead effort made me decide to do so. First off, they had a very good premise. Really. An alien race that kicked the heck out everything Earth had to send, then made a deal. In exchange for not killing off the planet, we had to turn over eight million people to be boiled into a medicine to cure a disease that nothing else will cure. There's also hints that Roswell was one of their ships, so they know all about us. The premise was good. The scenes of people walking sullenly into "camps," where they stand in line waiting to be taken up to the mother ship to be placed in containers where they are
well, I can't describe what happens to them, it looks like the transporter from "Galaxy Quest," except while they're covered in the electric goo, the machine instantly turns their bodies into a red liquid, the people screaming as they're bodies are boiled away. And it's all done with no secret plot, everyone knows and government is helping round up the victims. While other countries are emptying out their prisons, the US decided to have a computerized lottery where anyone could get picked. Many run, and the Army is out hunting them down for the aliens. Man, what a creepy idea. So much so, it made me think all weekend about how creepy an idea it was. I thought about the Holocaust, and how people just standing there, waiting to be taken up to the ship to die horribly and everyone knowing about it, didn't sound as crazy as one would think. Especially since the aliens need a specific number and if not you, well, maybe your parents, child or best friend would go instead. It wasn't that much of a stretch to imagine. But once you get past the Holocaust imagery (we even see the same kind of scene from "Schindler's List" where the people's clothes and personal effects are piled up after the last batch was sent off to their deaths), it stops being creepy and starts being cheesy. Someone else has suggested that this should re-made someday. I agree. Imagine "Independence Day" with the "human sacrifice" kick to it. Done well, this idea has promise. Done like this, well, I've seen high school film students make better stuff. The aliens aren't even good "Star Trek" quality. Give people strange haircuts and make them walk like they're on acid. THESE are the folks that overran the Earth? Not likely, my 7-year-old niece could take one of these goons out! At least "ID-4" and "War of the Worlds" had plausible attackers, beings are could accept could kick human butt. These aliens are worse the German sentries in a 1960s WW2 movie (see Fritz get knifed from behind). I won't even go into tactics, as I'm a former US Army officer and I could write for pages on that alone. Kids with paintball guns would do much better, let's just say. SFX? Hey, not too bad for TV. I have to give them that. I particularly like the "news" footage at the beginning where a MIG-25 takes on an alien spaceship. Good stuff there. And in all fairness, it was a halfway decent opening to the film. This was certainly filmed in Eastern Europe, and most of the budget seems to be spent getting some Western vehicles to the eastern location (they didn't bother with the military vehicles, as the Army is now using Soviet-Block 5-ton trucks now, it seems). Did anyone but me notice that NONE of the weapons actually being fired were real M-16s? They were AK's with fake carrying handles welded to the tops. That explains why all the gunfire was at night in the film, maybe? And how about the alien walking down "Mainstreet USA" that has cobblestones? Man, what town in the US has streets like THAT anymore? Like I wrote earlier, the scene of people being turned into goo were particularly disturbing (especially when they pull back to show thousands of screaming people trapped in cubicles in the wall, being liquefied). But I did find it kind of funny that people knowing full well that they were about to die horribly and that their own government cheerfully sent them to that end, NOBODY seems the least bit scared. There's a scene where someone being "tested" for the right blood type (yeah, they never explain what that was all about), this guy MUST know what is about to happen to him, and he looks less nervous than I do at the dentist. The guy is strapped down by an alien doctor, and he doesn't scream at all or look worried until about two seconds before he's boiled alive? Puh-lease. I get that the people know there's nowhere to run, but if you think thousands of folks would willing walk into something like that without struggling just a little, you're nuts. Brad Johnson and Carl Weather were each perfect for this: Two stars on the downhill side of what had been very promising careers (I STILL can't believe that's Apollo Creed playing the General). Both act with ability of a wooden Indian. And Erin Ross as the daughter? Hey, if she's really 20 like the movie says, this film will be up for an Emmy next year. In the end, a great premise went somewhere. I'm still wondering where. But wherever it went, it went there in classic "B" movie fashion. I actually want my two hours back after watching this.