A devilish bunch of boys

Rating: 10/10 (13 May 2006)

Boys like pranks. The main characters in this movie pull one after the other. All the pranks were funny. Of course, these are men, not boys. But they are allowed to act like boys because they are surgeons who are absolutely necessary for the operation of the hospital. They do their jobs, and that gives them license to tell everyone else where to get off. They ignore rules. They deal with people who get in their way, even when those people are superior officers.
I did not think this was a particularly anti-war movie. Yes, Altman WAS against the Vietnam war when he made it, and he did remove almost all references to Korea (except for the street signs in the town, which were in Korean). But the scenes of wounded soldiers had the effect, for me, of making it clear how important the work was that the surgeons were doing, compared to the trivialities of military life, thus justifying their antics and making them seem like good guys after all.