What is the worst war movie ever made?

My Brain | 6/25/02 | Burkeman1

[Burkeman1]

What is the worst war movie you have ever seen? Your reasons can be political, realism, historical innaccuracy, or a mixture but what is the worst?

[Momaw Nadon]

I strongly disagree with your assessment of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones.

The movie is brilliant and the combat scenes are breathtaking.

The battle between the Jedi allied with the Clonetroopers against the battle droids and the seperatists is one of the most intense I have ever seen.

Yoda puts in the performance of his career in this movie.

[Bahbah]

You are one great example of why I love this place. New job and too tired to give your commentary the response it deserves. We agree is the best I can do for now.

[Petronski]

As I remember, that was the Horst Wessel Song. I recently wrote a version of it for Al Gore. If you like, I'll ping you a copy. parsy.

Nope, it was the Panzerlied:

Ob's stuermt oder schneit, ob die Sonne uns lacht,
der Tag gluehendheiss oder eiskalt die Nacht,
Bestaubt sind die Gesichter, doch froh ist unser Sinn,
es braust unser Panzer im Sturmwind dahin
Bestaubt sind die Gesichter, doch froh ist unser Sinn,
es braust unser Panzer im Sturmwind dahin.

[CIBvet]

Hopped a ride from Cu Chi on the 3/4 Cav. 'Evening Road Clearing' chopper to Ton San Nhut in '68 ... We sat down long enough to take in The Green Berets at some AFB theater. Talk about a joke ... the whole place was up for grabs throughout the movie. Nobody could hear the dialogue for all the hoots and hollars.

[RightWhale]

Full Metal Jacket. Just plain strange.

[Prodigal Son]

Would I recommend the book? Personally, I'd recommend everything Joseph Conrad wrote- but that's just me. Some people think he is too verbose. I love the way he writes. Conrad lovers have their own personal favorite from his books and it would be easy to spend a lot of time debating the merit of each one. If you were really going to "do" Joe Conrad- I would say read all his other books and save Heart of Darkness for very last as the dessert- for it is his crowning achievement even if it isn't every Conrad lover's favorite (I like Lord Jim and Nostromo best of all). That's just me though; it's kind of depressing to get through all of a great (but dead) author's work and realize that that's the end of the line for that particular bit of enjoyment.

Ach, I'm rambling... Go on and read Heart of Darkness and if you like it, keep in mind that he's got some more good books as well. Yes- I would recommend it. It's also interesting to read lectures and short essays on the book after you're finished to see all the interpretations different Professors have on it and of course the book will shed even more light on Apocolypse Now. It should make your future viewings of that movie a new/different experience. Heart of Darkness was my intro to Conrad and I'm sure it was for many others as well.

[x]

"Dances with Wolves." Is that a war picture? When Costner shows up in the West and the officer he reports to immediately shoots himself, it looked extremely false and contrived. Either it was pointless, or far too pointed. It stood out like a sore thumb. Also Costner's "I want to see [the West] before it's gone." Would someone really have said that around 1865?

We know that some Indians looked down on White settlers, but in general, whether in "Dances with Wolves" or "Little Big Man" or "Buffalo Bill and the Indians" Hollywood always does that angle very poorly. All their natural smugness comes out, and it's very unconvincing. I didn't get a feeling from any of these movies that we were watching real Indians, rather than PC cliches.

"Pearl Harbor" was like a big, stupid, hokey comic book. Except for the extreme length, I didn't mind it at all. Probably, I just remember Kate Beckinsale and the few good parts and have blessedly forgotten the long stretches in between.

"U-571" was derivative, historically untrue, and boring. The "Thin Blue Line" was exceptionally boring -- and not boring in a successfully artistic way like Mallick's earlier films, "Badlands" and "Days of Heaven."

Platoon: was that as bad as I remember? Ditto for Fonda's "Coming Home."

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

The Dirty Dozen

Got my vote. Insulting the audience's intelligence and the military in one fell swoop.

[x]

A lot of people brought up Conrad's "The Secret Agent" in reference to recent terrorist activities (Ted Kaczynski was said to have been obsessed by the book). There's also a major "clash of civilizations" aspect to his stories and novels about the East Indies. Something for everyone today, imperialists and anti-imperialists, Islamophobes, and anti-Westernists, Occidentalists, Orientalists and race theorists.

[wardaddy]

Das Boot is arguably the best.

[BenLurkin]

1>"Savage Pampas" The exploits of the Argentine cavalry (no kidding).
2>"The Alamo" Great story, terrible movie.

[wardaddy]

Yeah the thought of a chick SEAL makes me quake in my slippers...LOL

[wardaddy]

My great uncle by marriage was killed at the Battle of the Bulge. Worse...he had a big row with my great aunt over his shipping out and they had a blow up at the family Thanksgiving Dinner while he was on leave and my Grandfather let him leave the dinner in a huff shamed by my then tempramental auntie....a few weeks later he's on the front lines and buys the farm. Neither my grandfather nor particularly my aunt ever quite got over that. My grandfather to his dying day always declared he should have stood up for the boy and told his sister to shut the "f" up. My grandfather bult military bases during the war....it was "high cotton" time for him.

[TexasBarak]

I'm sure that there are lots of fine choices for this category, but I immediately thought of Starship Troopers.
A horrible mangling of a sensitive "coming of age" novel. Paul Verhoeven(SP) obviously thinks the military is composed of psychotic morons. I wish that Mrs. Heinlein had insisted on them changing the title, because the movie had nothing else in common with the book. I could go on for hours about this one, so I think I'll just shut up now.

[mc5cents]

The Longest Day is also a good movie, I think. The English, French, German and American segments were respectively directed by English, French, German and American directors. Actually, the German segments were the best. I liked Pluskat and his dog.

And the German segments were spoken in German with english sub-titles. Contrast that with Midway where the Japanese scenes were done in perfect english. Not even a Japanese accent! Funny really.

[Austin Willard Wright]

The Conquerer is also notorious because (allegedly) a remarkably high percentage of the actors died of cancer. I think there was some atomic testing nearby or something.

[wtc911]

Wrong...."ALL THE YOUNG MEN"....nice try, thank you for playing....

[wtc911]

NONE BUT THE BRAVE....directed by Sinatra....awful...

[WhiskeyPapa]

My pick is the recent version of Pearl Harbor. It is dreadful on so many levels I can't go into here.

They somehow seem to have gotten the first draft of the script to the screen.

Definitely one of the worst movies ever.

Another bad war movie was the 1965 "Battle of the Bulge" with Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Robert Shaw and a cast of thousands of guys from the Spanish army. It was dreadful.

What else?

"Thirty Seconds over Tokyo" was a very bad movie. Another first draft rushed into production.

I thought the HBO Tuskegee Airmen movie was dreadfully bad.

Walt