Adrenaline Rush, Long Withdrawal, Certainly Worth Renting

Rating: Null/10 (30 October 2002)

I saw this in the theater and then recently borrowed a friend's DVD and checked it out again. I was still bothered by the beginning.
(SPOILERS) We're taken into Hanks' "horror-of-it-all" shell-shocked world in the first few minutes, then they reach safety behind a berm, he grabs his radio man, sees that his face is missing and tosses him aside like yesterday's newspaper, and then tries to use a shot up radio. Some guy gets a ricochet in the helmet, is told how lucky he is, then gets watermeloned. Visual gags? This after watching guys get torn in half by the most enveloping surround-sound machine guns and shells to ever reach the big screen. It kind of made me wonder where the movie was going. A deafeningly fictional account of war showing us how horrible it is? Okay, great, I'm totally there, now am I supposed to laugh? Ha ha. I've been a War Channel junkie since watching Victory at Sea on PBS in my Garanimals, and if the Insomnia Channel's got Richard Burton giving em' the what-for or even Kojak piloting a Sherman I am totally there as well, but don't overwhelm me with awesome auditory and visual effects and then fail to effectively draw the line between serious and sarcastic determination. Okay, no problem, time to relax, tell us about yourselves. Wow, what an assault. Take your time filling us in on the plot. (The scene back on the rolling farmland with the mother and her four stars was IMO the best scene in the movie.) Okay, so you're not going to blow up a dam or smoke cigars in the Eagle's Nest, that's fine, so the rest of the movie is a nitpicker, because it all looks great, but if you sense the fatalism and the mission is not to outwit the enemy toward victory (! ...Winston rules), then the vignettes on the way to your fate are all you have. The countryside and all kept me going nearly three hours in the theater, but zipping around with the DVD...okay, gripes on the vignettes...that sniper tower was not 450 yards away...three civilians left in the village, all hanging out out on the recently remodeled second floor veranda...if a wall falls down and the enemy is pointing guns at you, you open fire immediately (they would)...hey guys, keep your head(s) down, or at least show us somebody representing a sentinel, especially in a scene in which we're not sure if you've taken out that position...that half-track didn't see you?...a couple of sparkling "tankbusters!" straight from the Reno Air Races do a fly-over and it's surrender-monkey time? Anyway, good fun but not for the squeamish.