You didn’t mention the even sillier political correctness in U-571, the ridiculous convolutions they went through just to get a black guy onto the sub so that the cast would be more “diverse.”
Oliver Stone’s Alexander is certainly the worst war movie ever made in my opinion.
You didn’t mention the even sillier political correctness in U-571, the ridiculous convolutions they went through just to get a black guy onto the sub so that the cast would be more “diverse.”
Thank you for mentioning that, it was also a part that was incorrect about the film, which I also was annoyed to see the same thing in the Captain America film as well. Old books such as Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird leave details in that political correctness tends to avoid nowadays, however, what’s more admirable is the exceptional manner that Atticus Finch demonstrated his loyalty as a lawyer despite the attitudes prevalent at the time, or the fact that Jim was humanized by his going after Huck and saving Thomas Sawyer from a gunshot wound. Again, avoiding facts about history is condemning oneself to repeat it, at a discount price.
I would actually also rate Alexander up there among all of my worst war films. The main reason why I am so against U-571, however, is because it is distorting American History by a stretch. I mean, the truth is, we cracked the Japanese code, we signed peace with them after the war, but then, when we ask that the truth come out, while we portray numerous aspects of our own history in an extremely distorted way, that’s just disgusting to me, especially when there aren’t all that many people around now to tell the tale about WWII, and that number is soon to be well, miniscule. Lying is about not being able to face up to the facts, our own media isn’t facing up to the fact that we actually fought hard on the pacific front, cracked the code, and deserve credit for it, even over 60 years after the fact. We fought the war, it happened, but it isn’t happening any more, at least between us, Italy, Germany, and Japan.
There is a historical precedent for this. I read an interview in Proceedings a few years back of a black steward who was on one of the fleet boats.