Simplistic Morality

Rating: 7/10 (18 October 2008)

The theme is the same as Apocalypse -- the tenuous existence of justice in war. But the treatment is very different. Where Apocalypse was about the insanity of war, this is about the pathos and the beauty of it. Both involve thoughtful men (and both Sheens) who journey through war's landscape and come out alive on the other end, transformed. Charlie develops wisdom and pathos. Martin's transformation is from one type of dysfunction to another. My gut tells me the latter is truer to life, but then again Stone is real veteran.
Elias is Christ. "He's a water walker," "he thinks he's Jesus F-ckin Christ," his arms are outstretched as he dies for everyone else's sins. Barnes is his antithesis, the machine of war. He's (nearly) invincible, with an independent justice, but a system nonetheless. The ultimate message is that the purveyor of these two is a spineless bureaucrat from officer training.
But war isn't a morality play. Good and evil are relative, there is no standard coordinate plane from which to judge right and wrong. Oliver Stone knows this, but he still gives us the simplistic treatment. Apocalypse makes no mention at all of good or evil, just the diseased system and everyone's roles in it. Kind of a David Simon world, but rotting. I prefer that version. This one evokes the same tender emotion that Barber's music does -- beauty in a tragic world. But Apocalypse probes the depths.