So, it's my wife's birthday tomorrow (she's 29 again!), and she wanted to watch some movies this weekend. We did a Cineplex free rental yesterday, and tonight we went to see a movie in the theatre together for the first time in a couple of years. Let's just say that the quality of the movies in the era of COVID-19 is not as good as I remember.
The first one we saw, the rental, was Recon, a movie about some soldiers in World War II in Italy. Actually, it's about these soldiers suffering from PTSD while they're still out in the field, and how their sergeant is a cold-blooded murderer and sends these four guys off on what is effectively a suicide mission to reconnoiter potential German forces up on a mountain.
Twenty-five years ago, that would have been a very exciting movie. Last night...not so much. It was boring, which is not normally a word associated with movies about World War II, especially when the movie takes place in the field. Relatively recent movies like Hacksaw Ridge, for example, tell a great story and wrap it in some intense action. Recon is also based on a true story, but it's not a story anyone really wants to hear or watch. As I said, it was boring. The lead spends most of his time being terrified over the death of an innocent. The other three soldiers are constantly bickering and fighting. In the Italian mountains. Where they have been told there are German troops. And snipers. Because the easiest way to avoid a sniper's notice is to keep up a constant chatter and argument while trudging up a forested mountain.
The movie ended in a very pointless way. There was no feeling of heroics, no feeling of accomplishment, just pointless death. And, as a bonus, you know how when you watch a movie based on true events they'll usually put in a few sentences at the end to let you know what happened in real life to the characters portrayed? Well, we got those sentences. In German, no translation. Say what? No thanks; and, to be honest, I didn't care enough about the character to look it up and find out what happened to him.
So, that was last night. Tonight, we watched Let Him Go, a Kevin Costner movie about two grandparents who want to bring their grandson home from his stepfather's evil family. And I use the word 'evil' deliberately; these people are messed up in the head something fierce. The boy's stepfather is abusive to both the boy and his mother, and things don't work out very well for pretty much anybody in the movie. The movie is set in Montana/North Dakota in 1964, so it's understandable that the bad guys didn't yet know the rule of 'don't piss off Kevin Costner'. The survivors drive away at the end, tearful and silent. It was...not a happy ending, to say the least.
I think what bothers me the most about both these movies is the nihilistic viewpoint. It's like the filmmakers in both cases wanted to show suffering and misery, with no real payoff at the end. I mean, sure, Costner kicks some impressive ass in the climactic sequence, but his character always felt like he was on a fool's crusade, as if nothing was going to matter anyway.
My wife liked it, but she has a thing for Kevin Costner, so that's a biased opinion. Again, the movie was boring. There was some suspense, and a very gruesome scene before the climax, but it dragged. Costner was the executive producer on this, so he should have known better and made the movie more interesting than that. At no time did I feel a compelling reason to keep watching. But, it was her birthday movie, so I stayed put. I didn't fall asleep, so that's something.
Movie pickings are slim these days, but man, there has got to be better options than what's being offered. Fortunately, there are. I'm appreciating my collection of older movies more and more as I see what's being shown in the theaters today. For good war movies, you can't go wrong with movies from the 1950s and 1960s. A lot of the people involved in making those movies were actually in the war, so they knew what they were doing. And, as a bonus, they don't curse four times in each sentence, so young ears aren't going to be upset. For parents, that's an important draw.
I wouldn't watch either of these movies ever again; I'd rather not even know they existed. Strong recommendation to avoid them both.
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