Passion of a soldier

Rating: Null/10 (12 November 2016)

You can see a parallel with another feature made by Mel Gibson: PASSION OF THE Christ. Instead of Jesus, it is a soldier who is against violence and loves the human kind. You can't hate this movie which is the most powerful, bloody and brutal war movie ever made. A film besides which PRIVATE RYAN look like a Disneyland walk. Yes folks, a terrific piece of work. But... I highly prefer the two Clint Eastwood features from 2006 and 2007: FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS and LETTERS FROM IWI JIMA. If you permit, I will explain why. Unlike Clint, who is the king of Hollywood, Mel Gibson must be very careful if he wants to get back into the industry through the main gate after ten years of ostracism because his behavior with booze and antisemitism talks. He can't make a film, a war movie, showing the American Army the same way Eastwood did. If you remember closely the 2006 and 2007 movies, they were not movies glorifying the GI's. Here, in the Gibson film, you see GIs killing Japanese soldiers who surrender, yes, but Japanese soldiers who also throw a hand grenade on the GIs. And in LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, the GIs killed the Japs in cold blood, poor Jap soldiers without hand grenades... See what I mean? Clint Eastwood showed less bloody combat scenes, yes, but was closer to reality concerning the rest. There were not movies like this one which shows the war in its most terrifying and disgusting side, but on the other side, glorifies heroism. That disturbs me. You can't say to audiences war is bad and also say that heroism is good.
No, that's a very powerful movie, only a dumb could say the contrary, but I prefer the Eastwood two films and Sam Peckinpah's CROSS OF IRON. I persist and sign, I am dead sure that Gibson wants to get back into business and, why not, grabbing an Academy Awards and then proceed, resume his career with his VIKINGS film. That's my own opinion.