Oh, the ambivalence!

Rating: Null/10 (21 November 2002)

A film about war and violence from a filmmaker who is never quite able to decide what he thinks or feels about these subjects. If that sounds like a damning criticism it really isn't meant to be. Peck avoids most anti-war movie cliches, and doesn't shy away from the guts and misery, but can't avoid getting his caveman instincts aroused by the carnage. With this filtered through his typically warped sensibility you get something more complex than either liberal hand-wringing or gung-ho militarism, and certainly more interesting than the Spielbergian combination of the two seen in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. The film has flaws - it's homophobic in a way that's tacky and dull (the truth about heroic homosexuals in the war would be more arresting), and the film is certainly uneven - but it's the surrealistic weirdness that makes it compelling, and unevenness is the price you pay. Peck's drug of choice on this one was Slivowitz, a hellish Yugoslavian apple brandy which will take the top of your head off, and the film definitely feels like something conjured from a deranged mind. To be frank, Peck didn't know what he was doing half the time he was shooting this film. This shows particularly in the mad ending, which tails off unexpectedly leaving no resolution but a feeling of total disorientation, and in the dreamy shell-shock sequence, which compares well with Jaglom's TRACKS as a portrait of war psychosis. James Coburn is excellent (he will be missed) and Maximillian Schell a sinister delight. And long live the great David Warner - somebody give that man a decent role again. Casting him as a characterless thug in TITANIC just WON'T DO.