Painless is Suicide

Rating: Null/10 (4 October 2004)

Director Robert Altman's mad cap adaptation of the late Richard Hornberger (AKA: Richard Hooker) novel about odd-ball army doctors who work hard, play hard, drink hard, love/lust hard, and make you all laugh while trying to get through the Korean War as best they can. Starring Donald Sutherland as Hawkeye Pierce, Elliot Gould as Trapper John, Tom Skerritt as Duke Forrest, Sally Kellerman as Hot Lips Houlihan, Roger Bowen as Henry Blake, Gary Burghoff as Radar O'Reilly (the only lead to reprise his role for the TV series that followed), and Robert Duvall as Frank Burns.
Marred only by over-length, a slow pace and an anti-climatic football game finale.
Highlights include Trapper John getting a party for the much coveted chief surgeon post, Hot Lips orgasm with Frank Burns being broadcast all over the camp, Hot Lips being "exposed" by Hawkeye & the gang, and the whole bit with Hawkeye & Trapper John being interrupted for some surgery in Japan when they'd rather be playing golf.
The TV series that followed, while fun in its own way, wasn't nearly as blackly comical as the original film, though it won countless awards for its "humanitarianism". Where Donald Sutherland combined a laid back virility with light-hearted madness in the Hawkeye Pierce role, Alan Alda came off as smug, too self-righteous and off putting.
For some inexplicable reason, Duke Forrest was never included on the TV version of MASH (which was written up as M*A*S*H) even though he had been in the original book.