Shiny Molasses

Rating: 3/10 (6 June 2013)

Overblown docu-drama about the boorish army general plastically played by George Scott.
I've found that movie-goers really don't know anything about film-making or acting, so their opinions are often overkill in praise. Big productions sucker most folks into believing a film is a lot better than it actually is, the same way a terrible actor can get rave reviews just because he did a role in which he had little dialogue accompanied with an abundance of serious frowns.
Any hack director (in this case, Frank Schaffner) can make a movie appear 'extraordinary' with the mechanical slight of hand found here, starting with a long running-time so he can bring the story to the proverbial snail's crawl by interjecting time-consuming pans of landscape and wannabe-poignant shreds of empty dialogue, most of it by Scott as he waxes poetic while striking pretentious poses.
Just another war film, this one painted in American Neon, concomitantly salted with Scott's glazed ham performance.