Showing things as they were

Rating: Null/10 (6 August 1999)

Many of the comments comment on how the film was great and the TV series was funny but not great. The main reason for this is that the TV series had 25 running minutes and yet ran for 11 years, things get watered down after a while.
What many people fail to realize is, that the description in the movie of how the conditions in the Korean war were are not all that wrong. i am in the situation that both my parents participated in the war, my mother as a nurse on a hospital ship and my father as the ships engineer (this is where they met).
Their descriptions of what they saw out there, even in the watered down version that they are willing to tell are..... well.
A brief summary of the war, all the movement took place during the first apx. 10 months, first the South Koreans and the resident US forces where pushed almost into the sea and where locked in a small enclave around Pusan on the south coast. Then they pushed the North Koreans and their Russian allies to the Yalu river that markes the border to China. They where then pushed back to the 38th. paralell, where it all started. Then the forces remained locked in a trench war for more than 2 years never moving very far in relation to the 38th parallel.
The humor depicted in the movie while tough and very brutal at times, witness Spearchuckers comment as Haweye tells Duke that their ordes have come through and they are going home "Do you mind if we get out of this guys brain first!", Or Trapper Johns comment when he is first offered a martini in the Swamp upon arrival "What, no olives, you can't have a martini without olives", whereupon he proceeds to pull a glass of olives from his GI parka.
These are the little details that make the film great.
it is a film that you can see again and again and always find something new to enjoy.