A waste of time

Rating: Null/10 (30 December 2005)

It has been said that war consists of long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. This movie seems to want to recreate that by giving the viewer long periods of sheer boredom (unending internal monologues by the actors, long, artsy shots of landscapes, flying birds, a sprouting coconut on an empty beach, flashbacks and what appear to be flash-sidewayses of a Marine's wife being unfaithful back at home while he is mumbling on and on about how much he loves her) punctuated by moments of excitement and big explosions. I think there were more Japanese captured in this movie than there were in the first two years of the war in the Pacific, and long scenes of Japanese prisoners and battle-weary Marines all shivering and shaking together and trying not to cry after a fight was pretty damned unrealistic, given the historical record of that war.
If I watch a war movie, I want to see battles, fights, desperate struggles and acts of heroism. I don't want to see what looks like a very special episode of Oprah proceeding at a pace that makes a snail look speedy. There were a few good moments in the movie, but the accumulated weight of all the sleep-inducing scenes smothered them.