Famous, but in some ways still underrated, war comedy

Rating: Null/10 (21 November 2004)

This has "Spoilers". This is a war movie with practically everything. And it has a cult following as an adventure film, and as a comedy, but as far I know, it's genuinely underrated as a SATIRICAL comedy (though I know it's easy to use that word for any unusual war story). For one thing, as much as MASH or Catch-22 or others, it's almost full of things that people associate with Vietnam. Not just the obvious thing, the Sutherland character, but others. The "friendly fire" subject keeps coming up, and the idea of army generals not knowing where their own soldiers are, and of course money, and also lines like "We don't even know what this war's all about." (I'm not saying people in this country SHOULD connect those things with Vietnam alone - now less than ever- only that they DO.) As for the Donald Sutherland character, like most people, I can't say enough about him. Of all the things about him that ARE "anachronisms", one thing that really ISN'T one is the language - most of those expressions go back to the ' 30s. (Of course, I guess the farther back you go, the more they belong to musicians and not many other people, but still, they're not genuine anachronisms.) Another strange thing is that the violence is almost "choreographed", without being genuinely whitewashed, especially since the Germans in the story aren't evil- most are pretty anonymous, not good OR bad. I do hate what happens to the comical German officer at the beginning, even though that happens to comic relief characters in violent stories pretty often, and even though it wasn't done by any of the main characters. What stands out for me (and here I would especially use that word "satirical") is the ending. The idea of approaching a stereotypical German sergeant, who seems to care about nothing but his ORDERS, and using MONEY to talk him into FORGETTING those orders. And of course it WORKED. And the fact that he was played by Karl Otto Alberty, who made a career out of playing rigid German soldiers (because of his whole appearance), made the scene work completely (even HE got to be a little funny, with his facial expressions). And of course, apart from the obvious actors, it had a whole string of character actors - Gavin MacLeod, Harry Dean Stanton, George Savalas, Len Lesser, David Hurst. I could go on and on about it, but (apart from maybe being a little over-long) just about all of it works.