Posted on 10/20/2006 7:04:56 PM PDT by LS
Larry, I read "Flags" and tried to read "Flyboys" but was struck - as you were - by the moral equivocating. Turns out that the author spent many years in Japan and has a Japanese wife. I thought he was a bit of an apologist for Japanese atrocities. That's where "The Great Raid" really shone.
Surely you mean "desegregated" or "integrated"??
Yes I do. Thanks for the correction.
When I think of truly great war movies, the first one that comes to mind is "Zulu," and the second is "Patton." One thing that both of those have in common is there is no moral equivocating over what was right or wrong.
I'm sorry that Japanese cities had to be torched before their ghoulish, insane leaders would surrender, but them's the breaks. Better they fall into our hands than we into theirs.
"Battlegound" and "Stalag 17" are my all-time favorite WWII flicks. Bought both of them on DVD at Wal-Mart about a year ago.
I agree completely. That's the same point I was trying to make - that Holllywood gets caught up in just one level. For some of them, it's because they are propagandists (Oliver Stone,) while for many others, it is because of their artisitc, emotional, tunnel-vision. I have not seen this movie yet, but based on his other movies (Heartbreak Ridge), I would think Eastwood is much more likely to fall into the latter group.
BTW, I agree on Vietnam vets. I have four uncles and a cousin who served there, none of them drafted, and I served with a few Vietnam vets during my time in the Army.
One of the older men, I would guess that he fought on Iwo Jima, said that the actors were too clean to be fighting on Iwo, that the soot and dirt covered everyone so that usually the only way you could tell friend from foe was by their helmets and weapons. But in order for us (the audience) to be able to identify the different characters, some compromises had to be made.
Yes, this is the point I was trying to make in my Post 53, that Hollywood gets too one-dimensional, too caught up in the immediate, personal motivations, ignoring the "big picture," which is a real part of a soldier's motivation - in any war. Thanks for expanding on the point, I agree completely.
I still want to see this movie, and hope it is a good one. I think it is possible for Hollywood to take that narrow approach and still succeed in presenting a respectful treatment of the story.
Get it...if your recipient is at all interested in that sort of thing, it's a "can't put it down" winner; best book I've read in several years.
No doubt!
Exactly - thanks for the correction.
You don't think our government had a hand in the death of JFK ?
You don't think the State Department and other factions in our government have been involved in trying to "destroy" this President currently?
You are stone naive.
Say hello to Patty Fitzgerald for me.
One thing I hate about the current "bumper sticker" mentality of the general public is the tendency to oversimplify.
The reasons men join the military, fight and sacrifice their lives are multilayered. Fighting for your country, for freedom, for your way of life, for your family, and for your buddies next to you in a foxhole are NOT mutually exclusive.
It's worth it if for no other reason than the scene where they finally get the flag up and the entire fleet begins blaring its horns and ringing its bells.
B) Yes, we had to drop the bomb. But what I said was that Japan couldn't win, even if they had won at Midway. Their resources were such that they only built one more fleet carrier in four years (we built 17).
It was a matter of "when," not "if" we beat them, and Yamamoto, among others, knew it.
Kareem Abdul Jabbar has written a book about an African American tank battalion in WWII. I can't remember the name of it, but there are a few books about the black experience in WWII.
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