Horrors of War

Rating: 8/10 (24 January 2000)

There's violence and there's violence. With the huge numbers of personal reviews of this movie, I'm hard pressed to add much. The first half hour affected me like no other in recent years. I wondered as the boys threw up on the amphibious carriers whether they were seasick or scared beyond belief. When one uses the expression "cannon fodder" so casually, do we realize that this means the second wave makes it's way to the beach over the dead and dying bodies of the first wave, like ants sacrificing themselves to ford a puddle. The ones that get through, get through because there are only so many bullets and so many people. They are exposed, disoriented, helpless--they have no place to go but ahead. I will be haunted forever by the soldier searching, then finding his dismembered arm in the carnage. I will remember those trying to get above water, only to be cut down below the surface. If anyone has a heart, his or her attitude toward war should never be the same. How can we who have never been there have a hint of what it must have been like. Like Schindler's List on the Holocaust, this should be a training film on war.