Tunisia comes full circle

Rating: 7/10 (29 January 2011)

Hot off "Planet of the Apes", Franklin J. Schaffner directed "Patton", a biopic of the WWII general. It seems a bit odd to me that a movie about a WWII general came out at the height of the Vietnam War - to be certain, Nixon really liked the movie - but co-writer Francis Ford Coppola decided to incorporate several different aspects of George S. Patton's life to show that he was actually a very complex individual. Coppola of course went on to make one of the most staunchly anti-war movies of all time, "Apocalypse Now".
Although it features some battle scenes, the movie is definitely more about the man himself. George C. Scott shows Patton to be worldly (quoting literature) and aggressive (he infamously struck a soldier whose remarks displeased him, and then his apology was a pretty weak one). What caught my eye most about Patton was how he always wanted all the glory, even disobeying orders so that he could liberate towns before Bernard Montgomery did.
I wouldn't call "Patton" the best movie of 1970, given that the year also saw the releases of "Catch-22", "Five Easy Pieces" and "Little Big Man". As for Scott's refusal of the Oscar, I guess that he was entitled; he should have won something for "Dr. Strangelove".
Providing good support is Karl Malden as Omar Bradley, Michael Bates as Montgomery, Karl Michael Vogler as Erwin Rommel and a host of other people as various grunts and officers. My favorite scene is when Patton and the Russian official toast each other "one son of a bitch to another". I recommend the movie.
Oh yes, and part of the movie takes place in Tunisia, which recently saw the popular ouster of its dictator, while chaos engulfs Egypt.