Exciting...but not very realistic

Rating: Null/10 (18 June 2002)

I saw the movie Sunday. It is exciting (how could a John Woo film not be exciting?) However, a few nitpicks from a former Marine. First, to cinematography, flaming explosions may be important, but grenades are NOT nuclear bombs. There is a blast and a reasonably impressive puff of smoke, but the damage is done by essentially invisible fragments. A grenade does NOT produce a huge cloud of orange flame that can demolish a building and set everyone within 20 yards on fire. (That goes for Japanese knee mortars as well) Bullets don't set flamethrowers on fire (unless the person with the flamethrower has activated the igniter on the nozzle first, which the character had not done) I do take exception to the obligatory antiNavaho prejudice thread...as a rule the native Americans Marines were rather admired during WWII...some 101st Airborne troopers even cut thier hair into what they thought were Mohawk haircuts. I do agree that Mr. Cage's marksmanship was, while not impossible, at least very, very unlikely. At any rate, the bloodshed was not overly graphic from a "real life" point of view. Combat was actually pretty grim, as anyone who has seen color movies taken during WWII in the Pacific can affirm. At least we didn't have to deal with an overly graphic beheading scene...