2 Reviews: The Big Red One and 25th Hour

The weekend is the only time I have to watch movies. On Fridays and Saturdays, after the little girl is in bed, I usually pour myself a glass of whisky and throw on a DVD. This past weekend, I watched Samuel Fuller's war epic The Big Red One (penis jokes are way too easy with a title like that, so I'm not even going to bother) and Spike Lee's 25th Hour. I liked them both, one slightly more than the other. Here's my take:

The Big Red One

Lee Marvin has a face that was made specifically, I think, to star in war movies. What's so surprising in this movie is that, despite his gruff features, he plays a compassionate and caring sergeant. Movie critic cliche: it's a tour-de-force performance.

Marvin plays The Sergeant (he is not named in the film), a veteran of the First World War who leads a rifle squad in the US army's first division, known as "The Big Red One." It is now WWII, and the movie opens with the division heading to North Africa to persuade the Vichy army to side with America and break ties with the Third Reich. From there, it's on to Sicily, France, Belgium, Germany, and, finally, Czechoslovakia. Throughout the film, replacements in the squad come and go, but four riflemen remain. They are Zab (Robert Carradine), Griff (Mark Hamill), Vinci (Bobby Di Cicco), and Johnson (Kelly Ward). The film is very episodic, but it works well. Some viewers might feel that there are too many coincidences in the film for it to seem realistic, but that didn't bother me too much.

In fact, the only real plot of the film is the story of a German sergeant who, amazingly, encounters the Red One in every country. It's totally implausible, but again, I didn't much care.

What I loved: Robert Carradine is wonderful as the cigar-chomping Zab. Can you believe this is the same guy who played Louis in Revenge of the Nerds? I never knew he could act so well. Ditto for Mark Hamill, whom until this film I had only seen in the Star Wars movies (that's a lie, but I'm pretending I've never seen The Guyver). They're great, but let's be honest: Hamill's performances definitely aren't what made them great. Here, he plays a rifleman lacking the prerequisite guts to kill. I suppose some similarity between Griff and Luke Skywalker can be drawn, but the boyishness portrayed here and the boyishness from Star Wars are like night and day. It's a shame he didn't get to prove himself in more movies.

I also loved that you can really tell the movie was written by a man who actually served in the war. There are very few war movie cliches in the film, and the episodes recounted -- though I doubt everything is based on events that actually happened -- feel authentic.

What I disliked: not a whole lot, apart perhaps from one slightly hackneyed scene where the squad infiltrates an insane asylum in France, and it happens that an inmate picks up a machine gun and sprays a room full of fellow inmates and German soldiers. We get it, war is insane.

Also, some might complain that there doesn't seem to be much of a point made in the film. Is it pro-war? Anti-war? My take is that it's slightly in support of the latter, but it seems almost as an afterthought. Still, it's entertaining and poignant, with great (and surprising) performances. Highly recommended.

Note: the DVD that is available is a reconstructed version which adds on 47 minutes of footage missing from the version that was originally released in theaters.

25th Hour

I'm a big Spike Lee fan. He puts out films at such an amazing rate that it seems natural he would have some misses. Still, a lackluster Spike Lee film is 10 times better than, say, a decent Brett Ratner film. So says I. Some of Lee's movies are mediocre, while others have been labelled horrible (She Hate Me, for example). But he is the guy who directed Do The Right Thing and Malcolm X. Critics have claimed that the quality of Lee's films has diminished over the past decade. I don't see it. I loved some of his films that garnered mixed reviews, such as Summer of Sam and He Got Game. And he showed real balls with Bamboozled. One accusation which certainly cannot be directed at Spike is that he sticks to a formula. He's constantly reinventing himself and trying out new things (me, too. Today, for instance, I bought a second pair of underwear. It was a bold decision).

25th Hour , based on the book by David Benioff (who also wrote the screenplay), tells the story of Monty Brogan, a 31-year-old New Yorker facing a 7-year jail sentence for trafficking narcotics. We follow Monty on his last day, as he meets with his girlfriend (who, Monty and others suspect, may have set him up to be busted), his father, and two friends from his youth, Frank and Jacob. What will Monty ultimately do? Kill himself (he's deathly afraid of what awaits him in prison)? Go on the lamb? Or serve his time?

What I loved: both the film's opening and closing are original and memorable. The ending in particular is one of the best I've seen in quite a while (and, no, there's no twist). And the score! One of the best I've heard in a long time. Ed Norton, reliably, does one hell of a job playing Monty. He's comparible to a young DeNiro in that he constantly turns in great performances that seem so natural and effortless (although I'm fairly sure DeNiro in his prime didn't direct and act in dreck such as Keeping the Faith). Slight digression: I noted in a post from last month that he's perhaps the most talented of the new generation of actors, and that it's strange he hasn't been in anything memorable or notable for a while. I still believe what I wrote, but on Saturday, watching the bonus features on the DVD, I was reminded what a pseudo-intellectual he seems. If you want proof, listen to his commentary on the Fight Club DVD. And how about him -- in the mini-documentary contained on the 25th Hour DVD -- proclaiming He Got Game as one of the best films released in the past 20 years? I like the film and all, but that's just a bit of an overstatement there, Ed. Brian Cox does a great job as well. I was disappointed he got such little screentime, because he's terrific in everything he does. I'd be remiss if I didn't metion the "funny you should say that" exchange in the nightclub between former NFL lineman Tony "The Goose" Siragusa and Norton. It's a great piece of dialogue; and who knew Siragusa had such great acting chops?

What I disliked: surpisingly, I was disappointed by Philip Seymour Hoffman's portrayal of Jacob. He seemed stuck somewhere, as though he was unsure whether to make Jacob appear tragic or just a poor schmuck (though, to be fair, he's the only one in the nightclub scene who appears remotely drunk. My conjecture is that he probably was). Barry Pepper's acting is good in the film, but the script has him acting like such an over-the-top bastard at times that it's often hard to watch. The scene between him and Hoffman overlooking Ground Zero is well-shot, but his dialogue is so confrontational that one surmises Hoffman's character would in real life punch him in the face or walk out of his apartment. The honor for worst performance of the film goes to Rosario Dawson. She's one sweet piece of eye-candy, but she can't act to save her ass. My final criticism of the film is that most of the characters are unlikeable. Take Monty, for instance. During the movie I didn't once find myself hoping that he wouldn't go to prison (until the end, that is, and only because I liked his father so much). Contrast that with Ed Norton's portrayal of Worm in Rounders. In that film, Norton plays a guy who's 10 times more of a scumbag than Monty -- but we like Worm. I liked Monty, but only a little. I got the feeling that, under different circumstances, he'd be a lot less filled with anger and a lot more fun to hang around with.

Overall, though, it's a good film. Definitely worth a rent.

Note: I had been looking for the DVD ever since I bypassed it when it originally went on sale. To my surprise, E-Mart has it for sale for 9,900 won. A good deal for a pretty well-packed disc (it has seperate commentaries by Lee and screenwriter Benioff, in addition to some other features). If you live in Bundang and are considering purchasing the DVD, they had at least one other copy as of Saturday.

Final Verdict

The Big Red One: Tera Patrick


25th Hour: Sky Lopez