What were they thinking???

Rating: 2/10 (24 July 2000)

What were the makers of this abomination thinking when this movie was made? Once again, Roland Emmerich shows that he can captain a movie with a great cast, tremendous production values, excellent narrative flow, and a tidy plot that you can leave at the door when you leave. Has anyone suggested to him (and the others responsible for this thing) that you are allowed to spend more than $50.00 for a script???
Actually, my two main criticisms of the movie are the total lack of social responsibility evident in the film and the utterly gratuitous violence. As a caveat, I am a big fan of violent movies, and action flicks are the mainstay of my moviegoing existence. The dynamics change, however, when you involve kids. Scenes of little children shooting down men from a sniper's perch (which are selectively justified as "war is hell" and "you have to do what you have to do" when *nothing* else in the film even makes a pretense toward realism) and then talking about how they actually *enjoyed* the experience afterward completely blew me away. Oh, and let's not forget the sadistic protagonist who butchers a man in front of his kids, has about a half-second of remorse about his bloodthirst, and then shrugs the action off as something that he was forced to do by the exigency of wartime. Take what side you will in the debate about violence in movies -- I think that in the context of the juvenile violence which has been so ubiquitous in the media, and which has repeatedly spawned copycat violence, it is socially irresponsible to make portrayals such as these under the guise of "realism," especially when such attention to historical detail is so lacking elsewhere in the movie. It's also interesting to note that the "point" of such violence, which is ostensibly to horrify and to educate against the glorification of war, completely misses the point here when you think about how wanton this film is in embracing the conventions of every kick-ass revenge flick ever made before it.
All that being said, if you can stomach children being thrown into the mix of an action-packed bloodfest, then you'll probably love this movie. I'll stick to Dirty Harry, where good but bad-ass adults blow away bad (adult) guys.