Skidoo has been seen as something of an oddity in Preminger’s body of work, a director primarily known for heavier films like Laura, Exodus, and The Man With the Golden Arm.  The film was largely panned upon release as a cynical attempt to pander to a hip crowd, Preminger even brought in a young Rob Reiner to do uncredited rewrites on the script, reportedly telling him to “write scenes for the hippies.”  This DVD release marks the first time that this movie has even gotten a home video release, it’s current advent to video being probably due to the cult appeal it’s gained playing late nights on Turner Classic Movies’ TCM Underground, where bizarre not-quite-classics of yesteryear find their modern audience.

The DVD details on this one are virtually non-existent, though I can happily report it’s being released in it’s original anamorphic widescreen, and not a cropped frame.  Other than that though, we get no special features to speak of.  Given that this is the first and only release of Skidoo available to date, those of us wanting to own it will have to as our current President commands of we his subjects: shut up and eat our (Preminger) peas.  Though, really, this movie had me at Jackie Gleason and Harry Nilsson.  Sold.

Available on DVD

So, here’s where I ask everyone to indulge me for a second: I love Steven Seagal movies.  The early Seagal movies are legit, flicks like Above the Law, Hard to Kill, Out for Justice, all of those are great.  Then Seagal’s ego got so big it began to eat itself, which was in direct disproportion to his physical weight.  He directed what is one of the greatest so-bad-it’s-good movies ever, On Deadly Ground, in which Seagal blows up an Alaskan oil rig, no doubt wrecking the local ecosystem, and then proceeds to preach to us about the environment.  It’s action movie stupidity that is too good to pass up.  Then the studios decided they didn’t want to do movies that starred Seagal anymore, while Seagal decided he didn’t want to stop starring in movies either.  Thus the direct-to-video era of Seagal’s career was born, in which we got two or three sub-par action movies from the rotund action star each year.  Nine out ten of these movies are completely worthless, and devoid of entertainment.  There is, however, the occasional diamond in the rough, a movie that actually delivers some cheap Seagal thrills, and one of them is coming to Blu-ray this week: Belly of the Beast.

What Belly of the Beast is, is a Hong Kong style action movie with the belly of Seagal being dragged around on wires instead of Chow Yun Fat or Jet Li. It’s directed by Ching Siu-tung, one of Hong Kong’s premiere choreographers, the man responsible for the balletic action in films like A Better Tomorrow II, Shaolin Soccer, Hero,  and Peking Opera Blues to name a few.  He also directed excellent movies like the hyper-kinetic Duel to the Death (which if you haven’t seen, do yourself a favor and do so), and the classic A Chinese Ghost Story.  With a resume like that, you know we’re not working with the usual hacks behind the camera.  The problem is that Seagal’s rotund figure looks silly gliding and flying around in epic action movie bullet ballets (though Tom Cruise didn’t fare much better when John Woo did the same thing to him in Mission: Impossible 2).  But as far as Seagal movies go, though, it’s one of the best movies he’s done in his direct-to-video doldrums in that it’s relentlessly entertaining, even when it’s as silly as it gets.

The plot is a bit like Taken, Seagal is an ex-CIA/NSA/other mysterious government organization acronym agent, whose daughter gets kidnapped by terrorists, therefore Seagal must stomp the crap out of their colons.  Pretty simple stuff, it’s action movie comfort food.  It’s not the second coming of Above the Law, this is Seagal in his lazy period of body doubles after all.  But it does what most Steven Seagal movies these days fail to do: get your action flick rocks off.

I have this movie on a cheap DVD, and frankly, I see no reason to upgrade to the Blu-ray.  It’s not exactly a visual delight, and I doubt the studio has spent time lovingly restoring it, so if I were you, I’d just hunt down a cheap-o DVD, used if possible.  Or better yet, just NetFlix it, your wallet will thank you, and you’ll probably hate me less if you don’t like it.

Also, a big PS to Seagal junkies out there: if you’ve never read the book Seagalogy: A Study of the Ass-Kicking Films of Steven Seagal by Vern, do yourself a favor and pick this bad boy up from Amazon.  It exhaustively covers every Steven Seagal film from Above the Law, to Pistol Whipped, including a breakdown of his hilarious musical ventures, as well as movies he was involved with that never got made.  Vern makes some mildly obnoxious political statements here and there, but the rest of the book is a hilarious, excellent read by a true, blue Seagal nut that proudly sits on my shelf.

Available on Blu-ray

Other Noteworthy Releases

Limitless: Bradley Cooper is a writer who takes a pill that unlocks the other ninety percent of his brain and makes him awesome, or something like that.  Robert De Niro shows up for a paycheck.

Available on Blu-ray and DVD

Take Me Home Tonight: An homage to eighties teen comedies, word on the street is it stinks.

Available on Blu-ray and DVD

Tekken: Fun fact: this video game adaptation was directed by Dwight H. Little, the guy who made Halloween 4, Marked for Death, and Phantom of the Opera starring Robert Englund.

Available on Blu-ray/DVD combo and DVD

Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and The Beast: Criterion is upgrading their edition of Cocteau’s classic with a brand new Blu-ray edition.

Available on Blu-ray

The Music Room: Satyajit Ray’s 1958 film about modernity catching up with the old Indian aristocracy doesn’t look like the sort of film we associate with today’s Bollywood productions, and it’s getting a release this week from Criterion.

Available on Blu-ray and DVD

We Live in Public: A collector’s edition of this bizarre documentary on the sociological possibilities of the internet based on the insane experiments of Josh Harris comes out on DVD this week.

Available on DVD

Boyz ‘N The Hood: John Singleton’s breakthrough hit comes to Blu-ray

Available on Blu-ray

Amelie: I gotta say, every idealistic girl I met in college was in love with this movie.  I think director Jean-Pierre Jeunet has a unique visual style that’s all his own, unfortunately most of his movies do nothing for me, and this is one of them.

Available on Blu-ray

Chocolat: Another movie a lot of people I know adore that I never caught the appeal of.  I fully admit that I’m probably the problem in this faulty equation.

Available on Blu-ray

Bridget Jones’s Diary: To whom it may concern, it’s out on Blu-ray, so there you go.

Available on Blu-ray

This article originally appeared over at Parcbench

It’s telling that “The Twilight Zone’s” recurring character is not an A-list hearthrob but the diminutive, gap-toothed, akimbo-eared Rod Serling, the show’s chief writer. Rocky Balboa’s trainer, otherwise known as that bow-legged villian of Gotham, is the closest thing one gets to an actor associated with “The Twilight Zone.” Even the theme music steals the limelight from the actors.

A few years ago, I purchased the 28-disc “complete, definitive collection” spanning all five of the show’s seasons. I’m on season five, and I generally watch late on weekend nights after imbibing. The benefits to this are twofold: first, my imagination is more malleable then and, second, it enables me to enjoy the episodes a second time around without deja vu.

After purchasing the series, a friend recommended “The Obsolete Man” as his favorite episode in this his favorite series. Rather than watch sequentially, I skipped to that Burgess Meredith-starring episode. “The Howling Man,” “Eye of the Beholder,” “The Invaders,” and “To Serve Man” are also well done, but “The Obsolete Man” may be my favorite now too. Its set is spartan, the costumes drab, and the budget that of a high school play. Who needs CGI when you have Rod Serling writing the script?

Thirty years before that anonymous man stood up to a tank in Tiananmen Square, Burgess Meredith yelled “The emperor has no clothes!” at the state in “The Obsolete Man.”  Life imitates art. Our hero, Mr. Romney Wordsworth, standing before his prosecutor/judge/executioner, vehemently defends individuality against the dystopic conformity of the total state, books against their burners, and God against the hubristic men who would play Him as they deny Him. “You cannot erase God with an edict!” Wordsworth boldly informs the kangaroo court. His interrogator responds, “The state has no use for your kind.” It’s telling that writers would make the hero not a warrior or a saint, but a librarian.

Though Serling was a man of the Left, so much so that he returned the good cheer of his neighbor Ronald Reagan with contempt, several “Twilight Zone” episodes, particularly “The Obsolete Man,” feature distinctly conservative themes. This is true of a few “Doctor Who” episodes (“The Sunmakers,” “Invasion of the Dinosaurs”) and numerous sci-fi films (“Serenity,” “The Island,” “The Invasion”). This certainly doesn’t make the genre inherently conservative; if anything, science fiction tends to lamely absorb the liberal shibboleths of its age (see [hear?] the Cold War moral equivalence of ’50s radio sci-fi) as it imaginatively anticipates the future of science, technology, government, etc.

Other writers have advanced the idea that “Star Trek” and “The X-Files” echoed conservative themes. I find these arguments interesting but ultimately unpersuasive. There’s an impulse to read one’s politics into what one finds aesthetically pleasing. This is ultimately not as harmful as imposing one’s politics on one’s artistic tastes. But it is still a form of mild delusion. Propaganda isn’t art. And good art generally transcends politics.

Fifty years after the first “Twilight Zone,” one is struck by the dearth of writer-driven shows on television. Visitors to the 500-channel wasteland find an abundance of reality television, celebrity news, and game shows–or a combination of all three formats. Is there a place on the twenty-first-century idiot box for intelligently written programs? Rod Serling’s villains often targeted men of letters. A half-century later, television executives have marked writers as “obsolete men.” We are all living in the “Twilight Zone.”

I was at the Houston airport the other day and I couldn’t find my baggage carousel. I asked the employee there where it was:

“What does it say on the screen?” he asked grumpily.

“Well, it says Carousel 2 but…”

“Then that’s what it is. You should be old enough to know that,” he said as he went off mumbling about how they weren’t paying him enough. 

Anyway, it turned out that Carousel 2 wasn’t working and I had to pick up my luggage at Carousel 3, but I digress.  I had two more run-ins with airport employees, all of whom were putting out the same vibe that the crumminess of their jobs was somehow my fault.  In this country, people are of such an entitlement mentality that they want to blame everybody they comes across, requiring them to legitimately do their job and serve a purpose. I hate to say this but…

More often than not, people who are poor…. are right where they should be.

Nobody likes being broke. As somebody who’s had to live out of a 1982 Datsun, trust me, I know. I also understand that the first step to improve your situation is to fix the problem that landed you there in the first place.

The mistake that all “long-term poor people” make is putting others under a microscope in an attempt to set blame. That right there is a true loser’s mentality (or “poppycock” if you will).

When a great fighter loses a fight, he analyzes his loss extensively to look for possible fixes. He’ll watch tape, review the footwork and counter-punches, but most importantly, he’ll take a good, long look inside of himself. He’ll figure out which possible repairs are within his control and take charge of it. That’s what separates the champions from the “bums,” as Burgess Meredith so eloquently put it.

The same applies to life. If you’re unhappy with your circumstances, then change them. Don’t blame the government or your boss or the guy down the street who’s better looking than you (exceptions include Hugh Jackman and George Clooney).  Just take some Pepto-Bismol and be a man (or woman, for all of you bullish feminists).

Until then, how about shutting your mouth and doing the job you’re paid to do?  We don’t need any more Sean Penn’s running around.

Doing your job and doing it well may result in long-term success. What a concept!

Looking back at The Karate Kid (1984), which turned twenty-five years old this week, a thought keeps recurring.

Wow. . . Avildsen made it work twice.

John G. Avildsen is, in some ways, a director of little distinction when compared with well-known marquee names like Spielberg, Scorsese, Nolan, and Tarantino. The vast majority of his movies are utterly forgotten by the average filmgoer — indeed, he’s been nominated for Worst Director at The Razzies three times. And yet, like Victor Fleming decades earlier with his twin successes The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind (both 1939 — read a great recent article on Fleming here), Avildsen has twice punched way above his weight, netting himself an Oscar for Best Director and giving birth to some of the most memorable moments in motion picture history.

His first triumph, made on a shoestring budget and a scant few weeks of shooting time, was a little picture called Rocky (1976). He had no money, no stars, no amazing effects, and yet Avildsen used camera, music, and editing to craft scenes of immense power and impact. Has there ever been a film, before or since, that ends on a more rousing wave of uplift? That takes such pains to create identification and empathy with its wide array of characters? That more patiently or expertly builds up to its cataclysmic swell of emotion? That has the guts and sense of timing to fade to black at the exact peak, frustrating our desire to know what happens next even as it leaves us too blissful to care?

Rocky did all of that and much more, and despite its fight scenes now looking like slow-mo hokum compared to the MMA-style mayhem that now rules on TV, it remains the most memorable and effective boxing film ever made. That’s really saying something, given the immense amount of solid competition the genre boasts.

But as other directors began ineptly looting and mimicking Avildsen’s style and innovations, it looked as if everything that made Rocky great would quickly become so cliché as to make a repeat impossible. We all know that sinking feeling when we begin perceiving the clunky wheels of the typical “Hollywood sports plot” turning — that excruciatingly slow crawl towards the utterly predictable final showdown, where the very last seconds of a contest are shamelessly milked until the hero finally hits the last shot/punch/goal/basket. Even the Rocky sequels couldn’t escape these pitfalls, and it would be hard to blame an audience for glumly concluding that Avildsen’s 1976 artistic triumph had spoiled the sports movie for all time.

So who would have guessed that, eight years later, Avildsen would essentially pull off the same trick again? How on earth did he once again make a Rocky-style plot arc work, without the end result becoming a pale pastiche?

He achieved this feat in large part by turning everything we remember from Rocky on its head. Ralph Macchio’s Daniel Larusso is played not as a thickheaded lummox, but as a fast-thinking, bone-skinny teen whose nasal Jersey whine sounds more like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer than Sylvester Stallone. He’s neither a down-and-out fighter with his best years behind him, nor is he looking to “go the limit” to prove something profound to himself. He’s just a kid at the very beginning of his adult life, who for most of the film limits his ambition to simply not getting beat up. Similarly, Elizabeth Shue’s Ali Mills is light years away from Talia Shire’s Adrian Pennino: rich instead of poor, charming rather than an ugly duckling, sociable not shy. And Pat Morita’s unforgettable Mr. Miyagi isn’t washed up or pathetically ambitious like Burgess Meredith’s Mickey Goldmill — he’s the very epitome of contentment and balance and wisdom.

Rocky achieved its verisimilitude with generous dollops of grime, rust, blood and profanity, whereas The Karate Kid is notable for its relative wholesomeness (note how Elizabeth Shue even wears a one-piece swimsuit to the beach instead of the obligatory teen-movie bikini). The music marks yet another telling departure. Rocky’s iconic score, by Bill Conti, was a mix of 1970s funk, heroic brass, and a choir acting as a Greek chorus, all combined into a sonic brew that still ranks as one of the most recognizable and rousing in film history. For The Karate Kid, Conti was once again brought in as the composer. But this time, in between pop songs like Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer,” he chose a light mix of delicate strings, only occasionally allowing them to burst forth into full orchestral splendor. For the training montage, Conti completely eschews Rocky’s reliance on trumpeting brass and instead opts for the lonely skirling of Gheorghe Zamfir’s pan flute, creating a more spiritual and intimate vibe.

Avildsen’s camera, for its part, is probing and observant, often making excellent use of telephoto lenses to highlight what would otherwise be a missed reaction or expression. He achieves true poetry in the training scenes: on the beach among the circling cranes, on the lake amidst glittering golden waters, and even in the fights and strategies that pulse through the climactic tournament. He also warred with the studio when necessary to protect certain crucial scenes, such as the one where a drunken Miyagi reveals his service in WWII to Daniel. That one adds a whole new layer of depth to what was already a touching and authentic relationship, and yet the studio wanted it cut, deeming it superfluous.

On top of all that, the excellent screenplay by Robert Mark Kamen (who distinguished himself more recently by penning the immensely satisfying kidnap flick Taken) consistently leads Avildsen down novel paths. The teen villains of the story (portrayed by, among others, Steve McQueen’s son Chad and Elizabeth Shue’s brother Andrew) are refreshingly human, at times even gaining our sympathy. Unlike the usual faceless, gormless teens in Hollywood fare, this group is delineated exceedingly well, and remain recognizable as individuals even when hiding behind Ray Harryhausen-esque skeleton makeup in a genuinely chilling night scene. Kamen fleshed out his bad guys so well that the Cobra Kais, led outside the dojo by actor William Zabka’s smirking blond-haired bad boy Johnny Lawrence, now have a sizable fan following among Karate Kid aficionados. One admirer even made a clever YouTube re-edit of the final fight so that Johnny wins:

Meanwhile, a band called No More Kings has made a song about the redemption of Johnny called “Sweep the Leg,” with a fun “Karate Kid continuation” music video written and directed by Zabka himself:

In interviews, Zabka has expressed pleasant surprise that The Karate Kid remains so alive in the popular culture, calling it a “sacred film” and noting that there are even Cobra Kai bowling teams out there. It’s enough to convince me that The Karate Kid II should have been all about Miyagi reforming the Cobra Kais, slowly rehabilitating them into good guys.

In so many ways, Avildsen’s 1984 film is courageous in the way it deviates from the instantly recognizable Rocky formula. How strong must the pressure have been on Avildsen to make the easy, safe choices, mimicking his earlier masterpiece in every detail? His resistance to those impulses does him credit, and hence to dismiss The Karate Kid as a mere Rocky clone is to do it an injustice.

But if there is one overriding secret to the success of The Karate Kid, it is the transcendent performance of Pat Morita as Mr. Miyagi. In 1984, most Americans still conceived of the East, at least in cinematic terms, as a mystical wonderland of Kung-Fu magic and swordplay. Hong Kong directors like Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, John Woo, Tsui Hark, and Ringo Lam were only beginning to create the explosion of masterful, modernized pictures that would eventually change the entire way the world looked at Asians on film. It’s hard to remember how utterly fresh a character like Mr. Miyagi was to 1984 audiences, completely unexposed as they were to the renaissance happening in Hong Kong. Fully fleshed out, with a compelling backstory and potent motivations, he was written as charmingly colloquial and disheveled, a character who could consistently shatter the stereotype of the “magic Asian” to raucously humorous effect.

Almost always in American cinema — to this day — Asian protagonists are depicted as cardboard caricatures at best and laughingstocks at worst. Avildsen rejected the initial front-runner for the part of Miyagi — the great Japanese actor Toshirô Mifune — and instead bet his entire film on the talents of a thoroughly Americanized stand-up comedian, one who in his salad days used to bill himself in comedy clubs as “the Hip Nip.” Comedians have a strangely robust record of shining in good dramatic roles — think Robin Williams, Bill Murray, Jim Carrey, Tom Hanks, Billy Crystal, Steve Martin, et al. — and they often manage to strike a solid balance between laughs and drama. Morita did exactly that in The Karate Kid: affecting just the right Japanese accent, leavening his character’s power and seriousness with just enough comedy, and always figuring out ways to make you laugh with Miyagi instead of at him.

If you haven’t seen The Karate Kid in awhile, you’re in for a treat — Mr. Miyagi was no fluke, he remains one of the most winning characters in the history of cinema. It was the role of a lifetime for Morita, who garnered a well-deserved Oscar nomination (as it happened, he lost that year to Haing S. Ngor in The Killing Fields, who himself became the first Asian to win an acting Oscar). Any number of others would have played Miyagi as either an embarrassing joke or an irremediably grim Samurai grandmaster. But in his every glare, mannerism, and pose, Morita elevates the character into a veritable Gandalf. Look closely at the scene when he bows gravely to a shocked Daniel (who has just discovered that his hated chores were actually important lessons), or when towards the end he smacks his hands together with such orchestra-enhanced thunder that the audience jumps. In those moments The Karate Kid — so often seen as an also-ran and afterthought to Rocky — breaks away from that film’s orbit and soars free all on its own.

So Avildsen pulled it off not once, but twice — I still can’t believe it. And if he never makes another great movie, he can still sit back and rest easy, secure in the knowledge that two of the very best fight pictures ever made have his name on them. That he did both of them on such low budgets should give hope to conservative filmmakers who assume liberal Hollywood will never give them a chance. There is nothing in The Karate Kid that couldn’t be accomplished on a micro-budget — all you would need is the gumption to dream up the script.

But will anyone take on the challenge, as Avildsen did those many years ago? Only time will tell. Until then: wax on, wax off. . . wax on, wax off. . . .

It’s also something our movies used to portray well. We don’t get to see too many of these kinds of movies anymore. Nope, they don’t make them like they used to. That can be said of both the men and women of Bush 41’s generation, as well as the films of that era. But sometimes, in more recent times, we’re graced with shining examples of tarnished excellence, of battered beauty in our citizens and in our favorite art, the movies.   

“In Harms Way” is such a movie. It’s a great film. Imperfect, but great. When I ask learned friends of mine about Preminger’s films, they usually omit this one in their list of Otto’s greats. I’ve seen it a few times now, and I’m not sure why they leave it out. I’ve speculated it’s because they haven’t gotten around to seeing it yet. Nope, they’ve seen it, they assure me. So, when I delved deeper as to why it gets left out, I was a bit surprised to see a full spectrum of opinions expressed in describing the film and its flaws, real and imagined. It’s a good sign, though. If a work of art – and this film is art – can evoke such divergent opinions and emotions in an audience, then it’s working. Boy is it ever! 

A couple of things seemed to surface far more than others in the criticisms of this flick. Even Kirk Douglas, one of the stars of “In Harms Way” was somewhat vocal at the time in his opinion on some of these same perceived shortcomings.

Basically, he didn’t like the boats. 

With all due respect to Kirk, I think he’s wrong on this one. Recent comments I’ve heard about this film miss the mark, too. So, don’t listen to the technologically-dependent reviewers who say that the “special effects are lame.” I’ve seen plenty of worse special effects in newer, bigger budget films. But that’s not important. Because if you look for flaws, you’ll find them. To those who so easily do, I ask the following question: Have you ever had the pleasure of watching Shakespeare performed by a talented acting company on stage? Would you walk out because the stage lighting was lame or a backdrop wasn’t a perfect rendering of a landscape or village street?  It has long been my opinion that the folks who complain about special effects being “lame,” “bad” or “cheap” are missing the point.

The entire phenomenon of drama, of film is an “effect,” a cheat, an illusion, pulling the wool over our eyes twenty four times a second. The sum total of cheats and tricks are intended to transport the mind to another place, the setting of the film. The acting, scenery, effects are there to help us imagine, to aid our mind on its journey. So, when I hear one complain that the acting in a film is great, but that the effects stink, it simply tells me that the viewer’s mind is too weak to make the jump, to connect the dots, because, perhaps, some of the dots are not as boldly written as others. Either that or they just came out of a Roger Corman flick. 

As an alternative, would those critics of cheaper effects prefer to have Otto Preminger go out sink actual cruisers, torpedo boats and the real battleship Yamato for his film?  I almost expect the answer to be ‘yes’, judging from some of the commentary I’ve read on this subject and others like it. Let’s get serious, folks. Without a doubt, there seems to be a trend, more prevalent as the tooth gets long and the days go by, to confuse narrative drama with documentary. Even the Italian Neo Realists knew where to draw the line. Maybe it’s because documentaries of late have been produced like narratives, manipulative and with a clear and present intent on affecting the heart and mind of the viewer, politically and ideologically. Or maybe it’s because audiences are more sophisticated now and demand more technical prowess for their buck. Forget it. Give me a break. If the folks coming out of American Pie II are to be described as more sophisticated as compared with those exiting a screening of Bicycle Thief, then I’m in the wrong business and I need a new dictionary.  

When an old war film like this is shown on television or released on DVD, the usual suspects come out and take their hackneyed pot shots over the bow, criticizing the film for being too tame in the graphic violence department, or for using “cheap models” and other “not realistic” effects. These misguided critiques are often accompanied by the ubiquitous phraseology that goes hand in hand with such complaints, such as, “if you can get past the bad effects….”. This kind of unimaginative discourse is about as useful as Facebook in a knife fight. Often these criticisms rally together an alliance to hit the easy and much targeted Hays Code and Hollywood’s era of so called ‘censorship’, which just so happened to result in the best darn moviemaking ever seen in human history. Nope, that’s coincidence, they say. Mere chance that the obstacles, such as not having a fleet to sink, nor being allowed to show the fact that sailors when hit by the explosive force of artillery are turned into nothing more than steaming stains, actually produced better cinema.

Obstacles help.

They force the filmmaker to go around them, to be resourceful and creative with what they are able to show. Obstacles force the the creators of film art to use the power of their imaginations, and thus spark the viewer’s imagination of what they thought they just saw on the screen, but actually didn’t. By using the effects of association, montage and the art of lighting in creating a desired sensation, whether for suspense, doom or elation, great filmmaker can make us believe what we were seeing, and not seeing. And during that golden age of Hollywood, by not showing, they showed us far more than we can see now in the unbridled Hollywood of CG and anything goes. Take a modern pre CG visual masterpiece such as Blade Runner, for example. If made for the first time, in the near tomorrow of Los Angeles, 2010, Roy Batty’s “I’ve seen things” speech would be omitted in favor of simply showing computer generated attack ships burning off the shoulder of Orion. Cool, though it may be. Roy’s description sparked a fuse that still burns so very, very brightly to this day. Unwavering. The same cannot and would not be said if, the production began tomorrow, and we did see what he saw with Chew’s eyes. It would not be timeless, masterpiece of moviemaking history, but a dated and forgotten one faster than you can say, “you’re talking about memories.”  Because, over time, all effects become lame, outdated and clunky. Bar none. No exceptions. The only thing that never becomes outdated is our imagination. What we think we see. 

Others, not in favor of the CG answer, and though still not keen on how the battle action was portrayed in “In Harm’s Way” might prefer that grainy newsreel footage be used, as seen in the Pearl Harbor sequence at the outset of the film. No one can argue that such material is not real enough. The process of using stock footage can be convincing if done sparingly, for only seconds on screen, such as in the cold war classic, “Fail Safe”. Personally, I love to see war footage. But not in a feature film.  I’d rather see imperfect models than mismatched newsreel footage, which, for obvious reasons, all too often substitutes different vessels and aircraft type for those depicted in the story, usually in mid-scene! Some experts out there familiar with the cold war classic might fire back at me here and state that a movie like “Fail Safe” fails in this regard, as well, and by this very same sin. True, but the insert of stock footage happens so quickly that its somewhat inaccurate characteristics (I won’t say more) goes unnoticed by most viewers not versed in war machinery, leaving us safely undistracted and in the story. 

Also, it must be noted that though there is battle action, “In Harms Way” is not a war film, as such. It is a film that uses the war as its setting. Other critics who are able to “get past” the so-called lame effects, charge that there isn’t enough action in the film. This is a valid point. It’s based on a novel. Characterization is of prime importance. But, like From Here to Eternity and Farewell to Arms (both film versions from novels), the setting of the war is only a setting, a backdrop, a time and place to situate the activity of our characters and what kinds of messes they get themselves into. Sure, cinema by definition is about visuality and what happens next, what we see happening next, not about the written word. But there can be a very nice blend of literary greatness, storytelling and visuality that all movie classics from Hollywood’s golden era share. You show me a timeless classic film from the 30s, 40s, 50s and I’ll show you a dense script.  

Preminger deserves more credit for doing a fine job in transforming the story from the written word to the big screen. He doesn’t do it alone, of course. To help him are John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, and Patricia Neal with many fine smaller roles filled by Burgess Meredith, Dana Andrews, Franchot Tone and Henry Fonda as well as some other familiar faces I’ll let you enjoy noticing on your own. 

I won’t comment on each of the actor’s performances here either; you can see for yourself how fine or poor their acting is by your own standards after watching this admirable film. It’s my opinion, though, that you won’t be disappointed. You’ll find in at least one of them, something you can relate to, in another something you can empathize with, one you can love and maybe one you can honestly hate. 

I will add one point about the actors, though, and that is that John Wayne did a tremendous job in this film. Some say his understated performance was due to his having been diagnosed with cancer at the time. I’m in no position to say if that’s true or not. There are probably only a handful of people who still alive who are. But I can say this: if that’s the case, if his suffering from cancer was a reason why his performance was the way it was, then, rather than discredit, it says even more about the man’s strength and character and his ability to perform under such conditions than anything I can even begin to think of.

Another thing about Duke. It’s been my experience that the critics of John Wayne, of his acting, are similarly cynical concerning the topic of U.S. foreign policy and America’s role in the world. Such people, it’s been my experience to note, who resent his “John Wayneness” are often unreceptive to him as a figure of tough, no nonsense America, much more than his skills in acting. They despise what he represents, and therefore, anything he does or stars-in regardless of quality. This is a behavior we’ve all seen in the last several years with regards to George W. Bush. Those eager to mock the decisions he’s made ignore the fact that those same or similar decisions were made by other politicians which the critics themselves celebrated with nothing less than high regard and glee. 

Here’s an experiment: next time you hear someone making jokes about John Wayne’s acting, particularly if they aren’t good-natured jokes, or impressions – who doesn’t do a John Wayne impression? – discreetly inquire about their stance on U.S. foreign policy. Don’t be obvious, just see if you can wrangle it out of them delicately. I don’t think you’ll be surprised to find an overly negative and similarly cynical attitude in this area as well.

Watch the film. Ignore the shortcomings. A strong mind can do this easily. A weak mind will dwell on them. It’s your choice. Like Bush ‘41 and his generation depicted in the film,  ”In Harm’s Way” is an example of imperfect greatness that perhaps only history can appreciate completely.