War (movie) is hell

Rating: 2/10 (21 June 2004)

SPOILERS (I suppose)
I'm not going to talk about plot, or lack thereof. That the Navajo Windtalkers were a vital asset in WWII is true enough - my uncle served in the South Pacific. Instead, let's talk about how to make a war movie totally unwatchable.
In the opening sequence, we get to watch someone firing a Thompson sub-machine gun off-hand. Anyone who has ever served in the military and fired any kind of automatic weapon knows how impossible this is - yet this is repeated OVER and OVER again in this movie.
Then we get to see actors firing the .45 caliber pistols and hitting targets 40 or more yards away - without aiming. Not going to happen!
Battleships - which fire shells that are 16" in diameter - think about this for a minute, a shell that is over a FOOT in diameter, and also happens to weigh in at about a ton - so you're talking an explosive shell the size of a Volkswagon here - that makes small holes in the ground. How about more like a full broadside making holes about the size of a two story HOUSE in the ground - and there's 9 shells in a broadside, not just one.
The airplanes looked SO computer graphic that it wasn't funny, although close air support did get that close to the ground. Of course, you're not going to drop a bomb at 300 mph and have it visibly arc down like someone let a baseball dribble out of his hand, either - which was just stupid.
Oh, well - this had a chance to be a great war movie and truly tell the tale of some brave Marines. Too bad this chance was blown.