comment #1

Doug Pratt says ...

It was entirely and solely because of John Wayne's star power that the film was a success.

How about Heartbreak Ridge? If Clint Eastwood were just a little bit younger and played an experienced NCO, backed up with suitable pryotechnics, it might work.

comment #2

Sean says ...

I think The Green Berets was Ebert's first zero-star review.

comment #3

Wrecktum says ...

There's no contemporary movie star who has the clout or longevity of the Duke to get away with a pro-Iraq War movie these days.

comment #4

Midwest Doug says ...

Does Three Kings classify as an Iraq war movie or not?

comment #5

Teacher's Pets says ...

I'm excited as hell for Generation Kill this summer on HBO...when I read the book, I thought it could be made into exactly the type of movie Wells describes.
Most Iraq movies thus far haven't dealt with the actual conflict but its tangents; the general public is still trying to get a handle on the war itself, and aren't to the point of analyzing the deeper, more complex facets, so the trick is to slip those meatier elements into a straightforward exposition set in the actual conflict.

comment #6

Craptastic says ...

Off Topic... did anyone else have a freezing problem with their single disc version of TWBB? Mine froze around 1h13m. Wondering if I got a bum disc or if it's a bigger problem

comment #7

MilkMan says ...

Wes Anderson should do an Iraq movie. Who better than the King of Composition? Drop the twee brit rock and pipe in some Zeppelin. Imagine a ten minute lateral dolly track, in slow motion, through a Hadithah/Fallujah-type battle, scored to Battle of Achilles or When the Levee Breaks. I mean, let's drop the pretense that we give a shit about what the fuck is going on over there and let's get into some serious kinetic thrills. If Wes really wants to channel some Godard, he could include some music by Can, maybe even do a Lindsay Anderson and intercut the battle scenes with live concert footage. What I'm trying to say is that no one is going to make the defining Iraq movie until they understand that comabt is inherently psychedelic, and create the ultimate Stoner War Movie, moreso than Apocalypse Now.

comment #8

Rich S. says ...

Vietnam and Iraq are very similar in that neither seems to really have a "point." The original point of Vietnam was to repulse the communist threat from the North, but that couldn't really be done because the political bleed into the South. So we spent fifteen years, as Patton would say, "holding our position."

The original point of Iraq was to effect regime change and, ostensibly, remove the threat of WMDs. Since those two points were achieved, very early on in the war, we've spent five years "holding our position." In Iraq as in Vietnam, the populace doesn't really want us there and are not willing to change politically, so it becomes this open-ended slog.

Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket were so successful, in my opinion, because each told the greater story of the Vietnam slog within the context of a mission. The movies were really only peripherally about the mission, but there was a narrative structure there people could follow.

Plus, as Truffaut observed, it is really impossible to make an "anti-war" film because the very concept of war is inherently stimulating. Both Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now also work because they have terrific elements of black comedy.

I think where the current crop of Iraq films have failed is that they keep trying to show the forest without showing the trees. The key to a successful Iraq film is to show the insanity, but not make the movie ABOUT the insanity. Make the movie about a particular mission and story, and use the particular trappings of the war as the backdrop. Something like Three Kings does come to mind. And I do think that the first successful Iraq film is going to be an absurdist dark comedy. I don't know if it will qualify, but keep your eye on War, Inc.

comment #9

MilkMan says ...

Just watched the trailer for War, Inc. Rich S., and I think it's safe for you to take your eye off of it now. That's not the movie. A movie as good as Full Metal Jacket needs a director as smart as Kubrick, not the guy who directed War, Inc. which looks to me like the poor man's Lord of War, or whatever that shit movie was with Nic Cage and Jared Leto.

comment #10

sutter kane says ...

I don't think you can come at the war as directly as movies like stop-loss, redacted, or even elah. If you want to make a movie about the war, whatever your position, make is about something else on the surface. set it in the past, or in the future, even. what would rod serling do with the idea? That way the people that don't want to think about it can turn a blind eye to anything relevant, and the rest of us get to hear what some intelligent filmmakers have to say.

comment #11

BurmaShave says ...

THE HURT LOCKER perhaps? It wouldnt necessarily have to be an invented fiction. We've kicked their asses every time, they just keep coming back. Harrison Ford's Fallujah movie perhaps? If he does it after INDY.

comment #12

Rich S. says ...

You're undoubtedly right, MilkMan, but it gave me some hope that Cusack apparently co-wrote it. Plus, I like the Sellers approach of using a fictional middle eastern country to make satirical points. Wasn't Wrong is Right set in Kreplachistan or something?

comment #13

lazarus says ...

Unfortunately, Storaro hasn't shot a "big" film in quite a while, unless you're including the Exorcist prequel fiasco. The last noteworthy production credit I can find was with Warren Beatty on Bulworth. Recently he's been working with Alfonso Arau and Carlos Saura again.

It would be nice to see him back working with one of his old collaborators, and that includes Bertolucci and Coppola. Anything but another Sci-Fi Channel miniseries.

comment #14

MilkMan says ...

Rich, Rich, Rich...when was the last time you saw Wrong is Right? Not a good movie. Trash is trash. I don't care what the hipsters think. Just because you show it at a rep theatre with a crowd that collectively has spent over 10,000 dollars on haircuts in the last week does not make it either good, or worthy of reconsideration. It's a shitty action-comedy that is neither funny nor exciting. Don't give in to cheap nostalgia, Rich. Go rent Flandres instead.

comment #15

T. Holly says ...

Some personal stories involving the lives of Iraquis would be nice.

comment #16

MilkMan says ...

T. Holly:
#1) Go rent Iraq in Fragments.
#2) It would be nice if a Hollywood movie addressed the plight of all the innocent Iraqi men, women and children who have been senselessly killed in the last five years, but no one has ever made a movie about all of the Vietnamese we killed, so good luck.

comment #17

MAGGA says ...

The point of an Iraq movie is to say something significant, no? Why is everyone so eager to see a successful Iraq movie if it means going for exhillerating war scenes and stoner rock etc? I'm all for movies on the conflict, but not just for the sake of making one

comment #18

Richardson says ...

"no one has ever made a movie about all of the Vietnamese we killed"

Nobody has made 'Heaven and Earth' into a movie yet? Oliver Stone didn't tack a painfully earnest 15 minute monologue specifically about how much the war did to Vietnam, both the humans and the country?

You're probably right, I must've imagined that.

comment #19

alynch says ...

The only Iraq War project that I'm looking forward to in any real significant way is Generation Kill. That has the potential to connect on a personal level that most of the other films have lacked.

comment #20

Richardson says ...

"Does Three Kings classify as an Iraq war movie or not?"

Doug - it was not contemporaneous with the war, nor did it make money, so it doesn't fit with what this article is about, no. But, yes, it is an Iraq movie.

"Something as good and jolting as the last third of Full Metal Jacket, say."

I'm just glad to see somebody refer to that positively.

comment #21

MilkMan says ...

No one cares about Heaven and Earth, dude. Movie was a wet fart. Oliver Stone sucks, blah, blah, blah. That's the only example you can come up with? What about Year of the Pig? Hearts and Minds? You're not a de Antonio fan, you say. Check his shit out, bro. Then come to me with Oliver fucking Stone and his piss-take of a film. That movie wasn't about what we did to the Vietnamese people; it was about Oliver Stone and his addiction to Asian prostitutes.

comment #22

MilkMan says ...

MAGGA: Why should the MOVIE about the Iraq War be significant, issue-wise, when the WAR itself is treated with insignificance by the American public. You see anyone protesting? Everyone just kind of wrings their hands and makes a sour face when the war is brought up, then forget about it a minute latter as they are careening through traffic, trying to get home from work, all-excited about the pizza they just ordered and whether or not their movie arrived from Netflix. Think I'm describing myself? Maybe, but as far as I can tell, aside from the intellectually dishonest, NO ONE CARES, and to expect a movie to make people care is precisely what's wrong with this country in the first place. Don't care about the actual event, just make sure to care about the dramatization of the event. An Iraq War movie that doesn't pretend to care about what happens is perfectly in-sync with how we as a country are treating the war. Rock and Roll, motherfucker!

comment #23

roman says ...

If you did a pro-war Iraq film with several Apocalypse Now valkyrie bravura sequences of US soldiers blowing the hell out of insurgents and terrorists, fighting for the betterment of Iraqi civilians, and generally trying to aid a hostile region, you would make a fortune.

It would cause riots abroad, but you could literally back up the brinks truck here in the states.

I love you guys and your politics, but you're delusional. You put together a visionary director, a decent budget and a strong, nuanced script sympathetic to the 'Iraq as the model' ideology, and you're gold.

American moviegoers haven't rejected Iraq war films, they've simply rejected Paul Haggis.

comment #24

kidkosmic says ...

MilkMan has pwned this one.

comment #25

Pelham123 says ...

"Take the glamour out of war! I mean how the bloody hell can you do that?...It's like trying to take the glamour out of sex, trying to take the glamour out of the Rolling Stones. I mean, you know that, it just can't be done. The very idea! Ohhh, what a laugh! Take the bloody glamour out of war!"
- Tim Page in Michael Herr's "Dispatches" ...there it is.

comment #26

T. Holly says ...

There are no Iraqui prostitutes, but we have to learn to tell their stories, we're going to be there a long time and suffer it.

comment #27

MilkMan says ...

Right, T. Holly. Absolutely. That's a very astute comment.

comment #28

actionman says ...

Three Kings made money. $60 million domestic, $47 million overseas, and a shit-ton on dvd. And that was before Clooney was Clooney, if you know what I mean.

comment #29

corey3rd says ...

what happened to the Iraq War comedy called "Blowback" about PsyOps?

comment #30

Mgmax, le Corbeau says ...

Okay, so here's what we've decided in today's thread:

Making Iraq movies like late 70s/80s Vietnam movies hasn't worked. What might work is making it like a 1969 Vietnam War movie, but everyone would find that laughable. So what we need is to create a new hybrid art form combining the best of all 70s/80s Vietnam War movies to provide the gonzo kick of Apocalypse Now with the approved sentiments of the Hollycrat Party in 2008.

Glad we settled that.

The real issue is, all these Iraq movies, In The Redacted of Stop-Lambs, have BEEN The Green Berets. That is, like The Green Berets they're movies made totally in the mindset of the past war with no understanding of the new war. Eventually maybe somebody will make a movie based on real experience over there and capture a convincing picture of that surreal conflict like you can read about from people like Michael Yon and Michael Totten. Could be pro, could be anti, could be neither but simply observant and artistically smart. But no movie that had that kind of understanding of Vietnam could be made by guys who fought in WWII, and no movie that understands Iraq that way will be made by people who fought at Berkeley in '68.

"A soldier interrupted the Guitar Hero session, telling the pilots to get in the air. Orders would come over the radio. The pilots abandoned Guitar Hero and raced out the door into the cold night to their OH-58D Kiowa Warriors, economy-sized helicopters that would make a Ford Pinto seem spacious. The pilots crammed two each into the two helicopters, strapping in, cranking engines, while radio chatter had already started. The pilots learned that the Predator had identified a target, which it would laser-designate for a Hellfire shot from a Kiowa...

"Boise pulled up close and from about 80 feet up was doing a tight counter-clockwise circle around the terrorist while shining him with the “Pink Light,” an infrared light invisible to the naked eye but very bright to the night optics. Someone else from up higher also had an IR light on the bad guy, but neither Boise nor Lopez knew who was shining the other light from above. Maybe it was the laser from the Predator, they did not know. I thought more likely that the bad guy was al Qaeda, and God was lazing him for Lopez, who flipped his M-4 from SAFE to BURST, and started shooting the terrorist that God was lazing. Thirty rounds later, Lopez had not struck flesh, though the bad guy must have realized that things were not going well. It was dark for the terrorist as the little helicopter orbited him and Lopez rained bullets down, but the terrorist was still bathed in bright IR light when Lopez jacked in another magazine and finally shot the guy to death. Boise turned the Kiowa back to the FARP, reloaded quickly, and ended up taking another Hellfire shot, and the Predator also had fired a Hellfire.

"Total time from playing Guitar Hero to getting airborne and delivering justice was an astounding twelve minutes. Apparently at least five terrorists were killed, while at least one escaped, though he probably needs new eardrums and might ask for a raise before trying that again."

http://tinyurl.com/5gcumb

Tell me that isn't the movie you want to see. And it could go either way, politically; that's not the point.

comment #31

vp19 says ...

I don;'t care what kind of movie you make -- just don't end it with the sun setting in the east, as "The Green Berets" did!

comment #32

Titus Pullo says ...

Tet and Cronkite saying the war was lost happened in '68 no? Was TGB released before that? Seems like '68 was the last hurrah of hope before the country turned on the war.

No way that an Iraq movie about the current war that most people see as a mistake does big BO. We don't need an Iraq Apocalypse Now, we need an Iraq Quiet American(Phillip Noyce version), something along the lines of a movie about the CIA installation of Saddam. I'd love to the see the scene where young Saddam blows his attempted assassination of Qasim.

comment #33

dd says ...

Plus, as Truffaut observed, it is really impossible to make an "anti-war" film because the very concept of war is inherently stimulating. Both Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now also work because they have terrific elements of black comedy.

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