Humdrum Hill: where Police Academy meets The Dirty Dozen

Rating: 4/10 (1 December 2013)

This mediocre film consists of 3 strands very different in mood and content. The great problem with it is that it never reconciles these elements.
The first strand is a cartoonish raw recruits training film containing all the stereotypes we have seen many times before: the wise cracking black one, the well built one, the nondescript one put in to be killed off (maybe?) and of course, the officious Major who hates the guts of the hero, the foul mouthed Gunny Highway as played by Eastwood.
This training has all the verisimilitude of Police Academy, less so actually, since at least the police recruits knew that its not a good idea to threaten your superiors with physical violence as happens here. The scene where the well built Swede, about 7 feet tall and with arm muscles the size of a normal man's chest, is easily defeated in hand to hand combat by the 60 year old Eastwood, is laughably bad to say the least.
That is merely one of many things that would have gotten a court martial in real life; others include almost shooting the Major or firing live ammo at the recruits. All these things would be acceptable in an outright comedy film but the problem is that the comedy is so broad that it undermines the apparent seriousness of the rest of the film.
Gunny's potty mouth runs rampant in these scenes and the film would have been improved by some reining in of this. Less is definitely more when it comes to obscenity. Fortunately he is more verbally restrained during his attempt to rekindle a romance with his ex, the film's 2nd strand. This part has quite a different tone, that of a romantic melodrama. It's OK, but not memorable.
A third strand emerges about 20 minutes from the end. Like Police Academy the recruits must be tested in battle, to show that Highway's unorthodox (and probably illegal, for good reason) methods have really be more effective than the rule book. But whereas in Police Academy the tone remains light, here everything suddenly darkens. The enemy is shown being gunned down, corpses are strewn around and one is even shot at point blank range by Gunny.
Then, one of the recruits is killed- maybe. I say maybe because someone says "don't let him be dead Gunny" and Gunny replies "it's not up to me". This is then never mentioned again and the apparent death of one of their pals does not dampen the celebratory mood.
I do think this film would have better if those involved had decided what genre they were making. Is it meant to be a broad comedy or a serious film with comedy interludes? A less lazy script and tighter editing would have helped. As it is, it is more Humdrum Hill than Heartbreak Ridge.