School of War - Ep 61: Sonny Bunch on War Movies

Episode Date: February 14, 2023

Sonny Bunch, contributing columnist at the Washington Post and culture editor for The Bulwark, where he hosts The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood newsletter and podcast and Across the Movie Aisle, joins the show to talk about the best American war movies. ▪️ Times  • 01:35 Introduction • 02:16 What is a war movie? • 07:55 The Revolutionary War - The Patriot/John Adams • 13:15 The Civil War - Glory/Gettysburg • 16:56 World War I - Paths of Glory/Lawerence of Arabia (Hon. mention: Sgt. York) • 26:30 World War II - Inglorious Bastards/Patton/The Thin Red Line/Greyhound • 36:22 The Korean War - Heartbreak Ridge/The Manchurian Candidate  • 41:45 The Vietnam War - Full Metal Jacket (Hon. mention: Apocalypse Now) • 46:10 Post Cold War - Black Hawk Down/Jarhead • 49:00 Post 9/11 - 13 Hours/The Outpost/Generation Kill

We are lucky here in America, where most of us have no personal experience of combat. In fact, I think it's safe to say that most of us get most of what we know about war through film, and movies can leave a deep mark. In fact, I can report from personal experience that a not uncommon thing to hear a young Marine or soldiers say after their first experience of combat is something to the effect of, man, that was just like the movies. We're going to loosen up a little bit with this episode, and my friend Sonny Bunch and I, he's a professional movie critic,

are going to go through each American war and we'll each pick our favorite movie associated with that war. We'll talk about what movies tend to get right and get wrong about the experience of war. It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of Hawaii. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infinite. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stale. We continue to face a grave situation in Iran.

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining the School of War. I am absolutely delighted today to be joined by my old friend and colleague, Sunny Bunch. Sunny is a much more experienced podcaster than me. He hosts across the movie aisle. The bulwark goes to Hollywood.

He's a Washington Post contributor. He's the culture editor at The Bull Work. And now he's a guest on School of War. Sonny, thanks so much for joining the show. Thank you for having me on there, and I'm glad to be here. So the idea for today's episode, we're going to have a little bit of fun and talk about war movies. I host a podcast about war.

You host podcasts about movies. We are both movie fans and you are the expert. I thought I would start us off with kind of a general question because we were debating back and forth procedurally. how to do this and we came up with what I hope will be a fun gimmick. Or you came up with it, which is that we should both bring our favorite movie for each American war to the table and talk it through. But this led naturally to a conversation of, well, what is a war movie?

Like what is in bounds and what is out of bounds? What do you think is in bounds? Yeah, it's interesting to think about because I had never really thought about it before because you feel like war is one of those, war is one of the oldest genres in film, right? I mean, like, you go back to the, to the beginnings of cinema and it's, and it's there, right? I mean, even, you know, we could, birth of a nation is best known, you know, for it's, well, I mean, the racism, but also the, you know, the huge battle scenes that that director, D.W. Griffith put on. It's a, it's a huge, big, epic extravaganza sort of film. But you could also look at like Buster Keaton, right?

And the general, it's, is that a war? film. It's kind of more of a comedy, but it's set during war. I feel like it counts. And, you know, alongside the Western or, you know, I don't know, the, the comedy, whatever, you can, you can pinpoint war as one of the very early genres of film. But like what actually counts as a war movie is a more interesting question, the more I started thinking about this episode, because, you know, you could say, I mean, like zero dark 30, right? Zero dark 30 is a movie. I think we both like. And it is a is certainly a movie about the war on terror and it kind of closes with like an actual, you know, kind of big action scene, right? But is it really a war movie? Is it, when you think

war movie, you think like people going into battle, people, you know, we're, we've got a, we're going to look at objective, we're going to achieve it, or we're going to look at a person like Patton, right? And we're going to, we're going to, you know, kind of look at how he evolves through the war, World War II. And it's, it's tricky. So, I mean, I think that you have to, I think that, I think that you do have to have a sort of a battle component to the film. There has to be, there has to be some sort of, you know, big action, spectacular sort of moment. And it has to obviously be set during a war. And those would be my two big requirements. So, for example, movies like the Beguile, there are two versions of the Beguile, one starring Clint Eastwood back in 1971. I think it was the same year he

made Dirty Harry, which is about a union soldier who winds up on a southern plantation and tries to seduce the women who are there, the men folk have left for the war, obviously, and gets his comeuppance. I'll just leave it at that. There's another version of the movie with Colin Farrell that came out four or five years ago. But that, I don't think that really counts as a war movie, despite being very, very clearly set during a war. It's just set during the Civil War. It has soldiers in it. But I don't think it's not a big action spectacular sort of thing.

I don't think that really counts as a war movie. So by your standard, then, just trying to understand where we're drawing the line here, the English patient set during the Second World War, there are sort of moments of battle where the war intrudes. There's a heroin bomb diffusing scene, but it's really not about the war as much as it is about a kind of romantic story caught up in the war. That would not count. But something like The Great Escape, which is not about a battle, really,

and it's not about preparing to battle. It's about obviously preparing for an escape. I actually just recently rewatched that movie. It's amazing. Would count because the themes are more martial somehow. Yeah, I mean, I think the great escape, the great escape, I think, certainly counts. I mean, it's set in a war camp. I mean, the other thing is, I think, I think war, you know, war has to be integral to the plot.

I think you could have the English patient take place in a setting that is other than, I mean, obviously things about the movie would change. But I think you could have it, you know, take place in a non. a not necessarily war setting. The Great Escape has to be in a POW camp, really. I mean, like even a prison, like even, you know, even if it was like Escape from Alcatraz or something like that, I think it's a different sort of movie if it's not in a prison camp with, you know,

the Nazi commanders. So should we, should we die? Are we starting at the Revolutionary War? There were wars before that. I mean, some of these wars have no movies made it. Like, you know, Queen Anne's War. I don't think we've got anything. Yeah, I mean, it's tricky.

I wasn't, you know, we discussed the French and India. War, the, you know, the, if we want to go pre-revolutionary war, we could do, you know, Last of the Mohicans. Yeah. I think you're taking, that was my, that was, we do the French and Indian War. That was going to be, I think it might be the, it's lonely one I'm. I don't know. I don't know what else there would.

It's a great movie. Michael Mann. Early Michael Mann film, right? Like one of his first. It's funny. He, he made that after, after making thief and the keep and Manhunter, which were all like kind of smaller movie. This was like a big, like heavily budgeted epic sort of thing.

And it's funny. I heard a story one time about the producer, you know, the producer was like, why are you over budget? Why are you spending all this money on this, this, you know, the old epic war picture. And he and Michael Mann just took him out on a helicopter and like flew him over the battle scene while they were filming. It was like, all right, I get it now. I can see where the money is going.

Totally. Totally. I actually think I've not read a lot of Cooper, but I'm pretty sure that the story. in which it's set is interestingly enough a prequel, I think that Daniel DeLewis character is an old man in some of the main Cooper stories. And then last of the Mohicans gets written to sort of establish, you know, what old, what sort of the old true, you know, wilderness was, right? Because in upstate New York would have been the wilderness at this time. And that's how it comes along. You and are both big Michael Mann fans. So I'm glad we can work in the French

Indian War. Yes. What is your Revolutionary War nominee? I mean, there's, I, there's really only one choice for me. I was, I literally had to Google American Revolutionary War movie. We're not supposed to tell the, we're not supposed to tell the listeners that. Well, because I could only think of one. I could only think of one.

And that's, and that's the Patriot, the Roland Emmer, Edwin, a movie starring Mel Gibson, which I love, I'm like, I remember reading a historian just like tearing, he was tearing his hair out at all the inaccuracies in that movie. And I'm just sitting there like L-O-L-L-L-M-A-O. I don't care. I don't care about any of this because I get to watch Mel Gibson kill the hated British with a hatchet. So a theme of Mel Gibson movies.

It's there's a definite like real. There's some sort of real. I mean, Mel Gibson has many issues perhaps. But there's a real like anger kind of circulating through that and Braveheart. Well, there's, it's, it precedes. that and all of the issues to include the really unsavory ones are all tied up with, I mean, Mel Gibson, so my mother's Australian, so I have some exposure to like the world from which he came, and also an exposure to a very early Mel Gibson movie that kind of brings us all into

focus called Gallipoli. Oh, yeah. A great World War I movie that is extreme, well, it may or may not surprise you to hear in which the good Australian lads are sent to die in a meaningless, pointless, pointless war by their nasty sneering British overlords who quite literally sipty, as the Australian boys march off to be slaughtered by the Turkish machine guns. And like, I mean, Mel Gibson, I mean, I don't think he had much control in that. It's a Peter Rear movie, too. He didn't have much control of the movie, but it is all of a piece with Braveheart and the Patriot. There is this sort of Australian paleo conservative, anti-imperialist,

and strongly anti-British sentiment that ties all of these movies together. And it's tied up with all sorts of other things. one finds, you know, lurking at the edges of the political spectrum in Australia. Is that, is that, it's funny. Yeah, no, totally. I mean, the politics are not that different from, you know, European politics or American politics in that respect. So I also Googled.

I had to Google a fair amount for these earlier wars. As we move into the 20th century, you sort of encounter an embarrassment of riches for subject matter. I also learned, by the way, I've not seen this movie, but I have made a note in my research. I need to look up a movie called April Morning from 1988. You got to check this out. It stars Tommy Lee Jones and it is about the Battle of Lexington. That is all I know.

That is all I know. And an extremely young Tommy Lee Jones graces the poster for the film. What, 1988? That's what my notes said. Well, he wasn't that young there. I mean, he was probably, you know, he was 40-something probably. Yeah, fair enough. At least in my look at it, he seemed young to me.

But apparently the British are marching on Lexington and Tommy Lee Jones and other villagers are deciding what to do about it. I hope they don't roll over. I hope they don't just give up. What happens next? We'll have to find out. Are we admitting prestige television? Sure.

If you want to do TV, that's fine. So John Adams then. John Adams would be my submission. It's a very, it's part of sort of the great era of HBO. an amazing cast. Paul Giamati, obviously, is the man himself. You've got, I think is Tom Wilson. No, is it Wilson? Wilkerson. Wilkinson. Willkinson, excuse me, Tom Wilkinson is Benjamin Franklin. It's great. It highly, highly recommend it to one of a series of Great World War II, or excuse me, Great War themed shorter series, limited series from HBO. I think it's early enough that they actually called it a mini series when it came out. I don't know if you would do that today. Yeah. Now it would be a limited series, a prestige, a prestige. limited series.

I also relied on Google for the War of 1812 and basically came up dry. I couldn't find hardly anything that I could speak to. Well, I suggested we should skip the War of 1812 because I just, there's nothing. There's like nobody, I don't know, is there an Andrew Jackson movie about, you know, his, you know. There's some old ones. Yeah, I saw a couple, not many, but a couple older ones, but the one that left off the page to me, and I just wanted to read you the description, which I copied and pasted

from the internet is, uh, Tecumsehasa. Tecumse is a 1972 East German Western, directed by Hans Kratzer and starring Gokio Mietich and a Catherine Berger and Rolf Romer. Because I don't know about you, Sunny, but when I'm having a lazy Sunday afternoon, I think, man, I just wish I had an East German Western to pass the time. It may or may not surprise you to hear, judging by the description, that Tecumse paints the tale of the American West or the American frontier in a unflattering light for the Americans.

That's too bad. In line with the policies of communist East Germany attempted to present a more critical but also more realistic view of American expansion to the West than was characterized by Hollywood. So that's all I'm sure. I'm sure it wouldn't be dreary at all to watch. All right. Are we doing the Mexican-American War?

Are we skipping right to the Civil War? I think we just skipped. All right. I suggest that we skip that. I suggest we skip Granada. I don't think we need to do. Oh, I got you. I got you on.

I got you on. I know Heartbreak Ridge is a favorite, but I'm going to work it in. All right. Civil War. Civil War. Okay, go. Sunny Bunch on Civil War. All right. So this is one of those movies where I like had to kind of think about what a war movie actually is. I would say I am a huge fan of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. I think it's a great movie. It's a great movie about politics as much as anything else. And it very, it is obviously very much about the Civil War and, you know, his rationale for fighting the Civil War instead of settling.

with the South and the work that went into getting the amendments passed and all that. It's like, and it's also just, it's Steven Spielberg. It's really well shot. I mean, it's visually interesting in a way that most films, frankly, just aren't. And it has great performance. But I don't really consider it a war film despite having it's got one big battle sequence at the beginning. And that's it. So I don't really, I don't think it really counts as a war film, which leads me to like the most basic possible option I could.

I could give you, which is glory. I love glory, which is like kind of like, kind of, it's almost like an old school Hollywood prestige picture. It's, you know, nice. It's very handsome. It's got really good actors, won a bunch of Oscars. But I have always had a real soft spot for this movie, which is a little, a little smaltzy at times, but still very, very good, very touching.

I know, I know, well, I'll let you, I'll let you go next, but I know. I love, I love glory. It's great. We have one, I think there's multiple casts, but we have one of the casts of the famous monument to the 54th Massachusetts here in Washington at the National Gallery. My son's a big fan. It was very dramatic, you know, it's the soldiers marching off to the battle with the, I'm embarrassed to admit. I can't remember the actual curse, the historical figure's name, the character portrayed by Matthew Broderick. Major Shaw, Robert Gold Shaw, right?

Yeah. Funny what knocks around in the back of your mind. Major Shaw sort of on horseback leading the troops into into battle. And I think it's South Carolina. It's the final battle. Yeah, well, you got Schmaltzy. I can see your Schmaltzy and match you with Gettysburg, my nominee for this, which was also similarly to you was also important, in particular in my youth.

I think I had a two VHS tape of it that I must have watched, you know, 30 or 40 times over the years. Amazing cast. I mean, kind of a weird cast in some ways. Like, you know, you don't, Martin Sheen does not leap to mind as Robert E. Lee. And yet he actually does a pretty creditable job. in the role. Jeff Daniels, if I'm not mistaken, plays the great hero of a little or big roundtop, one of the round tops. You've got Sam Elliott in there. It's like kind of an all-star cast

of the day and a really sort of long, epic, loving tribute of the battle. I did not really like, I remember not liking its sequel, which I think was called gods in generals. I couldn't, I just couldn't, I couldn't take it. Maybe I was older. Maybe it was a little too even-handed, I think, in its treatment. Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting movie to watch, particularly having grown up in Virginia, you know, going to going to school in Stafford County, Virginia, you know, is a, it's a different sort of experience watching gods and generals, which I think is mostly in Spotsylvania, Fredericksburg. Isn't that, isn't that where that? I think that's right. That sounds right to me.

But yeah, it is a very, very much a both sides sort of movie. All right. Well, why don't we, I'm going to propose because then we move into another period of very slim pickens for good movies. I think there was a period of a bunch of Rough Riders movies focused on. There are some Rough Riders movies, but I have not seen any of them. I propose we move right to the First World War where we start to really come into a rich harvest of American movie making. So what do you, what do you propose? There are many more options for World War I, but not as many options for World War II, which is the granddaddy of war movies.

filmmaking. But World War I, I like, I am a, I wouldn't say I like, but I am an admirer of Stanley Kubrick's Pows of Glory, which I like for cinema nerd reasons. It's the first, it's the first movie where you really see Stanley Kubrick making a Stanley Kubrick movie with the kind of like long tracking shots, you know, kind of focused on an actor's face, basically. And it's, it's a war that is built for a Stanley Kubrick movie, right? He's kind of known for these tracking shots that are like focused on people's faces and following them around. And we're better to do that than in a trench for trench warfare. It is his most, it's his most straightforwardly anti-war film. You could compare it to Dr. Strangelove or full metal jacket in certain ways.

But this is like a kind of straightforward anti-war film. And working on it with Kirk Douglas is what got him the job to make Spartacus, which is a movie that I actually don't like that much because it is not a Stanley Kubrick film. is a Kirk Douglas picture. It is a, it is not, it is bereft of many of these stylistic ticks for which Kubrick was known. But yeah,

paths of glory, very good. World War I kind of gets into the murky, mucky, you know, endlessness of that war. Yeah, yeah,

I've got, this was hard for me. One of, I kind of had it down to two. And the first one, which will be the honorable mention is a Sergeant York, which is kind of, in many ways,

like an almost direct counterpart to, excuse me, counterpoint to, everything you just outlined. Amazing movie directed by Howard Hawks, stars Gary Cooper. In the true story of the great Albanyork, who comes from Tennessee, if I am not mistaken, if I get that wrong, I feel like people are going to be mad at me. But, you know, the better part of the first hour of the movie is really the protagonist's

sort of dark night of the soul is a young country boy who believes that the Bible tells you that killing is wrong. And so he's going to be a conscientious objector as America enters the First World War. And this is a true story. This really happened. He was eventually sort of talked out of conscientious objecting. He was talked into serving in the infantry and then in an engagement in eastern France in, I believe, 1918, he earns the Medal of Honor. And it's just incredible.

He basically single-handedly destroys a German company that has parts of his own company tied down. And this is because of his country boy, Daring-Due, he's an amazing shot. This is all really well-established in the film was sort of classic storytelling. techniques. It's just very, very well done. And what it really is, of course, you know, at a deeper, more political level, because it's made and I believe released as World War II is already underway, but America has not yet entered the war. And it is very clearly meant to be a movie about America, right? And America accepting sort of the realities of the world and what what the world requires and the sort of the kind of idealistic but fanciful notions of, if,

not pacifism exactly than a desire to remain unentangled, if you will, that those are not, that those are not going to hold, those are not tenable. Like, that's very clearly the message of the film. So about is on the other end of the line from Kubrick as you, I think, can get. See also Casablanca in this, in this genre of, like, movies that are about World War II that come out, like, right before the U.S. gets fully involved. It's funny, that's a really good one. And that is classic hawks, just like pure visual story.

telling the sequence where he's running essentially from like hole to hole taking out German forces. You're never, you're never confused about where he is. Like there's a perfect spatial understanding of what is happening in the picture. Again, Howard Hawks is one of the greats. And that is a great movie. Which actually, if I may make a thematic observation,

is the thing about war movies that is probably, you know, necessary to making a good movie, but the least truthful about the actual battlefield. you know, from time to time, you know, you'll hear people say, you know, who were in combat, like, oh, that was just like a movie on some level or we'll get asked like, you know, is it, is it like the movies? And the answer is, you know, in some ways, yes, in other ways, no. And in the principle way in which it's no, it's that in the movies, you know, as you just pointed out, in a good movie, you're not confused about what's happening in the action. So, and, you know, take Blackhawk down, for example, right before the RPG, you know, hits a truck, what do you see?

You see a bad guy on the roof pop out with the RPG launcher and fire the thing. But if you're in real life, you're the kid in the truck, you don't see a guy pop out with the launcher nine times out of ten. You just see boom. You know, you just, you just, you, so the actual battlefield is a place of genuine confusion where a lot of your energy is going into the most simple tasks of like, where are they? Who is shooting at me? From where?

You know, like those are actually, those things are what you're spending a lot of your time doing. But if you made the audience do that in a film, you would alienate them very quickly. So even I would, I'm curious to know your view of this. Even in films, maybe we'll talk about this one in a minute, like saving Private Ryan where, you know, famously the chaos of Omaha Beach is, you know, a major subject of the film's first 30 minutes. Even there, you're pretty well oriented, actually, as the viewer.

You know, you're not hiding behind something, looking at the back of that thing, like peeking out from time to try and trying to figure out what the heck is going on. Like you actually have a pretty mobile eye that gives you some sense of orientation to what's to what's happening. Yeah, I mean, I'm more curious about this from your point of view because I like I, one of the things I try very much not to say in my reviews is that this is like and this goes for almost any subject. Like this movie feels like what it must be like to do X or Y, particularly when it comes to war because I feel like that's such a visceral thing. And like it kind of cheapens it cheapens cheapens cheapens the experience of war. and the horrors and also the bravery and camaraderie and all that to be like, watching a movie is just like that.

You know, it's just like that sort of thing. But I, like, again, I'd be, I'd be more, more curious about this from, from your perspective. Because I do think, I think that they are, they are, you know, they're just doing very different sort. It's just a very different sort of thing, as you say. Did you, did you, well, we'll get to this. We'll get to this when we get to the War on Terror, Iraq, Afghanistan. I have a question for you, but. Okay.

Sure. Yeah, no, Unrealism, just to respond to your point really quickly. I mean, some films are very good. I mean, I actually think Blackhawk Down is a very fine depiction of actual combat. I find myself annoyed. I mean, obviously it's bad when, you know, sort of military details are portrayed unrealistically. It's aggravating, and you can do combat poorly, of course, in like a technical visual way.

But I find myself as much annoyed by the politics of movies about war, which inevitably, not inevitably, but oftentimes you will have a movie that is just dedicated to the thesis that war is trauma-inducing. It makes, you know, makes victims of us. You know, the troops are persecuted by an immoral brass in pursuit of their own selfish objectives, et cetera, et cetera. And here's the thing. Like, there's some of that going on in war. Like, it's not all wrong, right? And then you can have, as it were, movies from the right. We were soldiers once and young as a great example of this, Mel Gibson Vietnam War movie, where, you know, interestingly enough, because it's Mel Gibson, it's a certain part of the right where the brass, if you go high enough, are still bad. And there is

definitely like that, you can find that on the right as well. But, you know, combat is, you know, heroism. Combat is, you know, brotherly love. You know, like there, it is, it is a different vision. And to be clear, I can enjoy movies from both ends of the spectrum, but, but of course, these are, these are sides of the story rather than the, rather than the whole story. And every now and then you encounter, I was just watching The Leopard, which is, you know, a movie about Italian unification. It's on the, you can get on the criteria. Based on the Lampedusa novel, yeah?

Exactly, exactly. Great old, not Richard Burton, Bert, Burt, Lancaster. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's crazy movie. Bert Lancaster, great American movie, star playing this Italian count. I think he delivered his lines in English, and then the version I saw has him dubbed in Italian,

and the actors are speaking Italian when he's not on screen, but when he is on screen, it's very confusing, but it's a great movie. And in the middle of it, there's a battle scene, which is brilliant. It's really well done. and totally unsentimental, but also not, you know, mockishly anti-war either. It's sort of right down the middle.

And of course, dawned on me as I was watching it. You know, this movie is being made by Italians in, I guess, the 60s. Like, they've all seen the war. Like, they all lived the war. So they know what the truth is. Like, they're trying to tell the truth. Anyway, we should keep trucking here. Sergeant York was my honorable mention.

I won't linger on my actual nominee, which is Lawrence of Arabia, which is an amazing, amazing movie that in a way does go down the middle and is just about this crazy, you know, charismatic young officer who basically gets sent into the desert and comes back out of it again, leading an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire. Highly recommend. 10 out of 10, highly recommend. I watched this once years ago in like high school and I was like, eh, it's fine, but I watched it, you know, on one of those like double VHS on like a 20-inch TV. I'm waiting to rewatch it on like, I want to get a 70-millimeter, you know, big screen experience with us the next time it's playing around me in Dallas. I missed it when it was at the AFI Silver ones and I was going to go and I missed it.

That's a theater in Silver Spring, Maryland for folks who don't live in. All right. I think we're going to come on to, at least for me, where the hardest decisions were, which is World War II. Yeah. You first, sir. I am cheating by going, by splitting between favorite and best. I'm going to cheat here. So my favorite World War II movie is probably Inglorious Bastards,

the Quentin Tarantino kind of reimagining of the end of World War II, which is it's fascinating on a whole number of levels, but is just the great kind of brutal, bloody and funny filmmaking. And the best, I will go with Patton, which is, like, set aside all of the various qualities of Patton, and there are many. I mean, it was almost a meme before memes were really a thing. The speech in front of the American flag, there was like a kid in my high school who would like, we would, we would like, hey, do the patent speech.

And he would just like recite it on the bus for the rest of us. It was awesome. It was like it was like having a real life gif here to reference. But like on top of all that, it also like is a weird, it's this weird kind of bookend to the greatest. decade of filmmaking by any single director who has ever existed. So Francis Ford Coppola

did not direct Patton, but he did write it and he won an Oscar for writing it. And then after that he makes, he makes the Godfather and the Godfather Part 2 and the conversation and Apocalypse Now,

all of which he gets nominated for best director and I think best screenwriter for and wins like two best picture trophies in that stretch of time. I mean, like, the decade of Francis Ford

Coppola. Again, one of the single greatest runs of any filmmaker, it's certainly confined to a single decade that has ever existed, starts off with him winning an Oscar for Patton, which is extremely well written and has the great speeches, but also has the kind of, you know, it's funny, you're a Patton fan, yeah? Oh, yeah, a Maisie movie. Amazing movie. Do you, when you were watching the movie initially, just watching it, you know, at home on AMC or whatever. Did you get the sense that we are supposed to to judge Patton harshly for hitting that soldier or are we always supposed to be on team Patton? Because I know folks who are like, this is

an anti-war film and, you know, we're supposed to, we're supposed to not be on Patton side. But every time I watch that movie, I was like, that soldier had it coming. And I think everybody around, everybody around him thought he had it coming. And like the movie itself kind of portrays Patton as like being unfairly put upon. And the big speech that he gives to the rest of the soldiers where he's, you know, quote unquote apologizing is like not apologetic at all. And he gets the big hero shot. I like,

I have always thought that that movie was very firmly on his side. But I know some folks disagree. Well, so it's interesting. I think it is ambiguous in the movie as it was to an extent in real life. Now, if I'm not mistaken, there may have been. So we actually had a patent episode. last year with a guy who's writing a multi-volume biography of Patton. And I don't believe the movie portrays some of the further details of the actual incident,

which is to include Patton sort of having slapped the soldier, realizing he's done wrong. I mean, realizing he's crossed a line, however much the soldier may have had it coming on some deep level. And he's storming out of the hospital surrounded by doctors and staff. And, you know, he's clearly kind of, he's not in a good place. And he's muttering. He's muttering about, you know, conspiracies that are, you know, trying to keep him from winning the war. These conspiracies are, you know, being orchestrated by the usual suspects in such conspiracies.

You know, it's not a pretty picture of, you know, Patton's sort of demons and deepest worldview. And, you know, he, so, you know, the incident itself was probably less ambiguous. The movie portrays it, I think, as ambiguous as sort of the, you know, the great commander in a moment of weakness over. stepping and sort of the tension between, I don't know, I don't know how to say it exactly, the tension between what it takes to be a battlefield, a great battlefield commander on the one hand and what it takes to run a professional army in a democracy on the other, right? And just that that's going to generate conflict. I think that's how the movie portrays it.

I mean, I think in real life, frankly, I think the real life account is less sympathetic to Patton. He just, he was, he was unwell in some ways. and this was a manifestation of his of his unwellness. Yeah, they definitely romanticize the idea of Patton kind of like sitting there and moonily dreaming about being a, you know, ancient warrior on the battlefield and a poet. And, you know, like, there's stuff in there that like, if that happened in real life, I'd be, you know. No, it's crazy.

Shouldn't be like this. That's not. That's not. But on the big screen, it works because it's mytho poetic and, you know, whatever. else. Well, the funny thing is that in war itself, it worked, and for a very simple reason, that he actually was a good battlefield commander. I mean, it's really as simple as that. And, you know, in an existential struggle for national survival and the future of the world, right, you want commanders who can win and Patton could win. And so his, you know, Eisenhower,

of course, who is the polar opposite, Bradley, too, right, who's the big foil in the movie itself. But his, you know, juniors, peers and seniors are all kind of aware on some level that he's batty. And it's a problem for his career. He sits out D-Day. He sits out Normandy as a consequence of this. I mean, he's used as a great sort of deception ploy to fool the Germans, but that was downstream from the fact that he was in trouble. But in the end, he gets to get back into the war because they want to win.

And so as a result, they're willing to tolerate all of this stuff that in any other set of circumstances, to include in the 1940s U.S. Army had it been a peacetime army, would just, I mean, would have gotten you put in a corner. Because it's not, it's not okay. Like, it's crazy. Okay, so this was hard for me. This was really, really hard because I, you know, I'm kind of immersed and marinated in World War II, and there are any number of World War II movies I love.

And we've already talked about what honorable mention saving private Ryan. I'm a big fan. This is probably controversial, the thin red line. Are you, are you pro or anti-Malek? I can't remember. I'm pro-Malick, though. I don't love this particular Malik. It's good.

Don't get me wrong. It's good. It has some beautiful stuff. But it is him indulging his worst. for me. Very well. Very well. And then there's, I mean, there's older movies.

I mean, there's this great period in the 60s and 70s of just great World War II epics. A Bridge Too Far is the favorite for my childhood. Another one where I had the two VHS set for it sort of the all-star cast about Operation Market Garden. But I want to, I want it threw out there. I don't know if it is my favorite or the best, but I do think it's underappreciated. It's an excellent film that is underappreciated. And it's relatively recent. And it is Greyhound starring Tom Hanks.

Oh, yeah. about the Battle of the North Atlantic. It is, it's a very good movie, a very good naval combat movie. Tom Hanks plays a destroyer, I believe it's a destroyer, a warship captain, who goes to see and the tension that is, I think, more explicit in the novel that is the basis for the movie, and you have to kind of guess it what's going on in the movie itself. But basically, he's a very senior captain in the U.S. Navy whose career has kind of got a drift, and he gets put back into action because of the war, but he's never actually seen combat.

And he goes and he takes command of this ship, and it's his American ship and a bunch of other British ships guarding this convoy crossing the North Atlantic. And all the British captains have seen combat, extensive combat in the North Atlantic. And he has not, but because of naval custom and tradition, he is now in command of the squadron to escort this convoy across. And he's very unsure of himself and, you know, very unsure he's up to the task with command. And the sequence in which he essentially duels was this, you know, wolfpack of U-boats who were trying to sink whole the merchant ships under his charge. The novel, the original novel, if I'm not mistaken, is called The Good Shepherd and is

amazing. And it is one of the finest, if not the finest depictions of the psychological burdens of command. And Tom Hanks' performance is absolutely amazing. And there are little ticks that the film brings out well. Like he doesn't get to change his shoes over the course of, you know, something like three continuous days that they're dueling with these U-boats in the danger zone in the middle of the ocean. And like that, it was like, oh, big deal, you didn't get to change your shoes. Like, who really cares?

Well, it's, you know, it's a way of illustri. It's like three days, essentially, without sleep, you know, wholly focused on survival. One mistake you make and another ship full of, you know, merchant Marines goes up in flames or your ship, for that matter. You know, it's just life or death for three days. And unlike, you know, the infantry or ground combat where there's sort of, as it were, dispersal of authority, you know, corporals are making decisions, sergeants are making decisions all the way up to the generals making decisions.

in naval combat, to an extent even today, but certainly at the time, you know, the captain is the captain. The captain is the decider. And everything sort of moves organically according to his decision. So the burden really does fully rest on Tom Hanks. And it's brilliant. It's really, really good. It's great. That's one of those movies that got kind of lost during the pandemic. They shifted it from a theatrical release. I think Sony is who made it and they sold it to Apple TV Plus for some absurd amount of money, which is too bad because I feel like that would be a great movie to watch on on the big screen. It is like the the the ne plus ultra of dad films. This like the most dad movie that has ever dad movie. It's very it's it's but it is

wonderful. I like it a lot. Well here on the school of war podcast we are here to serve America's dads that that is what we are about. The forgotten war Korea we we we we almost skip this one but I'm gonna I'm at a bank in the you ruled out Grenada of which of course the great I think possibly the only Grenada war film. Only every one of Ronald Reagan's interventions had its own associated great movie, but Grenada does. It's Heartbreak Ridge with Clint Eastwood. And in a way, it is a Korean War movie because the, I mean, it's an absurd movie, but I love it. And I think every Marine is required to love it.

The crusty old gunnery sergeant played by Clint Eastwood, who inherits a, you know, early 80s, ill-disciplined, unserious, I think, platoon of reconnaissance Marines. It has to whip them into shape to go off in the service of the Reagan Fort and Paul. policy, God bless them. That character, I think it's Gunny Hathaway. Clint Eastwood's character is haunted, haunted by his experiences of war over the years. And if I'm not mistaken, the Heartbreak Ridge, which is the title of the film, is a battle he experienced as a young man in Korea.

And we get little flashbacks to it and sort of explains why he is the crusty, hard-bitten, uncompromising fellow that he is. And it's very much of a piece. I mean, it is the same ethic, the same sort of condescends. conservative wish fulfillment as dirty hairy. You know, what if you really could whip these hippies into shape is kind of like the upshot of his interactions with the Marines and, you know, also of a piece with, you know, sort of the Rambo movies.

You know, it's like a particular kind of conservative take that is skeptical of national policy, loves the troops, loves the fighting man. And it's great. It's a, it's full of so bad it's good moments. I mean, it's just one after the other. Yeah, Korea is a tough one. There's not a ton. And I went with, the two that jump out are the Manchurian candidate and MASH.

And I have never been a huge fan of MASH. I never really cared for the movie or the TV show, frankly, just never did anything, neither did anything for me. But of course, I was a little young. The Manchurian candidate, on the other hand, is just a great piece of filmmaking. And it's one of the early examples of the paranoid style of filmmaking that kind of swept through the Hollywood and European cinema in the 1960s. the late 50s basically through the late 70s.

It is just a, it really is a, it's kind of a wonderful, but it's almost really not a war movie because it's very, it's only kind of tangentially associated with war. There aren't a ton of big battle sequences, you know, so I'm kind of cheating here by my own rules, but I, I quite enjoy that movie a lot. You know, for anyone who's listening, you know, should Tom Hanks happen to be listening to this podcast, the Korean War could be the subject of a great limited series. I mean, there are so many phenomenal battle sequences, you know, like the first Marine division coming back from the chosen reservoir would, if I may humbly submit to the people in a position to do this kind of thing, make for a phenomenal. And the Marines really deserve a better series.

I'm going to make a controversial statement right now. They deserve a better series than the Pacific, which is fine and full of great acting and good moments and great account of a number of sort of well-known Marine heroes at the Pacific. But it just really suffers in comparison with Band of Brothers, which is the far superior World War II. miniseries. And so the Marines, Marines deserve better. And I propose the Korean War as the place to find it. Yeah, it's funny. I'm sorry, it's funny how badly, the Pacific is a good series, but it is not as good as Band of Brothers. And I was never 100% sure why, just from a filmmaking point of view. I think, I think it mostly has to do with the fact that the, you know, the band of brothers follows essentially the same group of guys going across Europe. It's a very linear sort of

thing, start in America, go to England, then to mainland Europe, and you're basically tracking the same guys. But with the Pacific, you're just all over the place. I mean, there's, yeah, yeah, like, at the start of every episode, there's a map that's like, you're here now and you're with these people. And it's like, that's, it's hard to track. It's just harder to track. I completely agree that is 100% the problem. It's basically a writing problem and a sort of high-level conception problem. It just lacks the discipline that Banded Brothers had. I mean, the war in Europe is vast, too, and full of, you know, basically an infinity of

possible stories to tell. And I guess because they just used the Ambrose book as the basis of it, they just made a decision. We are going to tell the story of the war through one company of soldiers, a company that did a lot of crazy stuff, sure, but like a lot of companies, there are a lot of crazy stuff. Actually, this one just happened to get a book written about them. But the discipline that that imposes on the story makes it digested and actually in a weird way

than does better justice to the overall story. And in the Pacific, they do exactly... I mean, I'm a Marine. I know all these stories. I know who these people are. You know, I know who Chesty Puller is. Like, I know basically what happened.

You sort of raised on this stuff and inculcated with it. I mean, I was struggling. I think like to start, I was like, wait, where are we now? Which regiment is this? Which island is this? It's so hard to follow.

And they cobbled together these great, like a good chunk of it is based on this memoir with the old breed. But another chunk of it is based on helmet for my pillow. So I think it's E.B. Sled for one and then Robert Lecky for the other. And they're both characters in the series as well. And it's just too much.

It's too much. There's a lack of discipline and it suffers as a result. Vietnam. You know, in a way, MASH, which you already brought up, even though it's about the Korean wars, of course, it's a Vietnam story. It has the kind of 60s, again, quite, you know, political from the left, you know, ideological condemnation of, you know, war as such. and certainly America and capitalism on some level.

But what's your nominee for a Vietnam War movie? Well, I'm curious to get your take on Full Metal Jacket, which is my pick. And so Full Metal Jacket is another one of these movies that is very interesting because it is, it is nominally an anti-war film, except Cooper himself always described it as a war film, not an anti-war film, which is a distinction from both Pads of Glory and also Dr. Strangelove, which is like an anti-colon. War movie. But the, but Full Metal Jacket is a, is an interesting one because, you know,

on the one hand, it's always described, it's described by many people as anti-war. On the other hand, I've never met a Marine who doesn't like it. Totally. I've never,

I've never met a Marine who wasn't like into the, the first half of that movie in particular with the, the gunnery sergeant who is, what's, I'm totally spacing on his name. Yeah, yeah, I'll look at it. But the,

that whole sequence, is like, again, it not just, not just, it's not just that Marines like it. It's like, I hear from folks who are like, I wanted to join the Marine Corps because of Full Metal Jacket and Arley Ermey's performance in as the gunnery sergeants, you know, kind of running rough shot over everybody. And I always look at that. I'm like, really, that's, I, but it takes, it takes, but you, you are a Marine of a certain age who grew up with a full metal jacket on as kind of a readily rewatchable.

sort of thing. What was your experience of it? So I have experienced everything you just outlined. It is completely accurate. I'm going to get NJP'd, by the way, non-judicial punishment for the non-marines listening to the podcast for not knowing Arlie Ermi's name right off the top of my head. I think he recently passed away too. He did. Of course, the story there, which you know is I believe he was a consultant to the film. And then Cooper makes the snap decisions like, why do I, why do I need an actor when I have the real thing here? And that's why his performance is so naturalistic is because it is the real thing. And you are absolutely right.

I mean, there's no way to watch this movie and not see it as a searing take-down indictment of the Marine Corps specifically the war in Vietnam more broadly and kind of, you know, Western, you know, state action and imperialism at the broadest level. Like, it's not ambiguous. It's very straightforward what it is. And yet, and yet, as you point out, it is a movie below. I, too, have never met a Marine who does not on some level love the movie. they're out there. Their voices are not well heard in the Corps. I have been in classrooms,

Marine Corps formal training environments where clips from the movie are played at the start of whatever the period of instruction is to motivate the room of students and occasionally elucidate whatever technical point is coming up because they'll pick something from the movie. It is totally embraced by the Marines. I should give some serious thought to that there's probably a good essay to be written that explains the psychology of what you're describing, which is completely accurate. There's a way in which the criticism is sort of absorbed and slightly perversely, perhaps a lot perversely, you know, embraced and then flipped somehow. But yeah, I mean, I think a lot of Marines who have been through recruit training, you know, the period of being

portrayed in the film with Arleigh Ermi is like a kind of a lawless one. You've only got one drill instructor. There's not a lot of way of rules and accountability. I'm not sure the The reality is quite like that in the in the in the 21st century. But yeah, I mean, it is it is absolutely embraced in beloved totally. And I, I do have watched it with enjoyment many times. So even me. Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating. It is, it really is a fascinating psychological element to all this.

And I, I, I still don't entirely know what to do. And the, the kind of dumb take on this as well, Cooper didn't know what he was doing. He didn't understand, you know, the power of it. And I'm like, well, no, he's. He understood exactly what he was doing. He was, you know, showing the process of becoming, which is a very powerful thing, especially if you are kind of, you know, adrift in the world. So full metal jacket was also mine.

We came to the same one there, though I did have an honorable mention for Apocalypse now, which is like more line not about Vietnam, you know, as you know, the Conrad story set in Vietnam, but it is a great movie. Gulf War. What do we have for Gulf War? Goll Four is another one that's like, it's kind of tricky because I, there are aren't a ton of great golf war movies. I am not a huge fan of Three Kings,

which I find kind of snide and don't love. So I'm going to cheat. I'm going to cheat and do Black Hawk Town. I'm going to, which is not a Gulf War movie. Not a Gulf War movie at all. It's several years later in Somalia. But echoes some of the ideas of the Gulf War

and kind of this idea of, you know, it's a fascinating, movie because it's a pure accident of history that Black Hawk Down came out like two months after 9-11 and I remember watching that movie. I didn't even, I actually didn't even see it in theaters. I saw it when it was on DVD, maybe six months later. I remember watching that movie and just getting like angry, just getting just getting like angry all over again about Somalia, but also like 9-11. And like, and it is exceptionally powerful. Great. A great, as you mentioned. great depiction of combat and the kind of messiness of it.

But I have always had a very soft spot for it. Totally. Totally. It's one of the great post-Cold War American War films, if not just American films. I love it, even if it is unfairly shoehorned into the Gulf War category here. My nominee is not nearly as good a movie as Black Hawk Down. It has its moments, though, which is Jarhead, which has two great things about it. One, it's one of the great trailers, actually, of American movie making.

like super entertaining, get you stoked up trailer. And second, at least this is what I noticed. Maybe others had noticed earlier, but this is the movie where I noticed just what an amazing actor, Jamie Fox is. Jamie Fox plays the Marine Staff Staff Sergeant, who is sort of in the Clint Eastwood role. He's the crusty old non-commissioned officer, staff non-commissioned officer in charge of these Marines in the film.

And the performance is amazing. I mean, it's like the real thing come to life on the screen, even if parts of the movie are a little silly. but I'm a fan. The only other option I would throw out there is live from Baghdad, which is a TV movie. It's not actually about the military. It's about the media and kind of how CNN shot the first Gulf War and kind of the kind of, I don't know, the interesting things that went into that. But it has a great Michael Keaton performance.

Totally. I've seen that. I don't know how I've seen that. I have not thought about that movie for probably 20 years, whenever it was that I saw. So, okay, let's move on to post 9-11. We've got to Iraq. We've got Afghanistan. I think there have been a lot of movies made about this period, but to me, there's not

the wealth of quality that you get with, you know, it's not like World War II or Vietnam where you really are making hard choices, at least for me when I was looking at them. How did you, how did you feel? Well, you're, this is one of these, this is a period where everything is pretty nakedly just anti-an-war and anti-what is going on with only a handful of exceptions, you know, know, there's Michael Bayes 13 hours, the Benghazi movie. Oh, you're great movie. I love that movie.

Which is interesting. I like, I don't love it, but I do like it a lot. And it is interesting because it represents a lot of Michael Bay's very specific, idiosyncratic, ideological ticks, which is pro-troops, loves the troops, loves military hardware and gear and gadgets, and hates higher-ups, hates higher-ups. You know, this isn't, this isn't a movie that I think some of the Bengals. Ghazi hounds really wanted it to be where it's like herringing Clinton and Obama for like not, you know, for leaving these guys out to dry. But like the shots that he uses to illustrate the absolute inactivity in the outside of the theater of combat to try and help these guys is like in and of itself damning and pretty pretty outrageous. I like zero dark 30 a lot.

But again, it's like kind of marginally a war movie. And I really like the outpost. Have you seen the outpost? I'm embarrassed to confess that I haven't. It has been on my list to see it. There's nothing against it. I want to see it. I just have not yet gotten around to it.

This is this based on the, is it Jake Tapper? Yeah, it's based on the Jake Tapper. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I want to see it. So it's really, I mean, again, I don't want to say like it's a great depiction of combat in Afghanistan because I have no idea what that's like. But it feels like a very good depiction of combat in Afghanistan because it is, it's just kind of episodic and drags on. And there's no, it does have. have a big, obviously, battle at the end, which is where, you know, a couple guys won medals of honor and at at Cop Keating, I think it is. And but the, but the, but the, but it, it gives a sense of just kind of like, all right, we're here in Afghanistan. There's a lot of sitting around and every once in a while an IED goes off. Or there's like a, you know, a skirmish with, you know, a bunch of, a bunch of morons or like more likely like a truck falls off the side of a cliff. Yeah. And like, what do you do? What do you do about? What do you do about?

that. I don't know. It's really good. I strongly recommend it. I think it's on Netflix, but I'm not 100%. I will check it out. I have been meeting too. There's a very good documentary. There are a number of good documentaries, actually, this period of American warfare. And there's one, I think, that is basically set in the same rough area and depicts the same kind of work called Restrepo, which I don't think goes to Kop Keating, but it is in the same general part of the country depicting some of the same themes is very, very good. Was that the younger documentary, the Sebastian? I think that's right. I think that's right. Yeah. So I actually, I agree with all of yours. I'm an enormous zero dark 30 movie and that's the war on terror. Generally, it's kind of, there is actually

a scene set in Afghanistan. In fact, I was in Afghanistan when the CIA officer and team were blown up by Al Qaeda. I was in a different part of the country. But my addition to all of this would be the miniseries Generation Kill from HBO, which is, which is just fantastic. It follows a platoon and company of the First Marine Reconnaissance Battalion attached to the First Marine Division and the invasion of Iraq. And is, you know, among its many qualities, it has many, has some amazing performances,

that's working with some very good source material. And the thing that it gets, which is really downstream of the source material, is the language of Marines, and in particular enlisted Marines and ground combat arms unit. They are really poets with, you know, profanity and edgy storytelling.

And when I say that, I'm not, I'm not exaggerating. Like they are deeply, deeply creative and come up with, you'll just be sitting there and hear them say stuff that I can not repeat on this, on this podcast, which at times aspires to be a family podcast, that you really are like, how did you come up with that? That is, that is disgusting and wild and kind of brilliant. And Generation Gold does not shy away from that. And so in that respect, among others, is a deeply true telling of the story. And I think it's David Simon, isn't it?

The guy did homicide in the wire and everything. It's very well done. It's very, very well done. Well, what have we learned here? What are, what are our takeaways besides there are some, some great war movies? I think one that you said multiple times that I took away is there is a kind of movie that keeps getting made over and over again. I think it's from the right.

And it's the troops are good. Combat is interesting. Valor is real. But it's all being used by people who don't have the troops best interests at heart. Like, that's definitely a theme in what we've discussed. Yeah, I mean, I think that that is, I think that's certainly one. Take away. I mean, the issue, you know, the issue with movies is that they have to be interesting narrative storytelling devices, right? And so you have, it war presents a conflict. War presents a conflict, a pretty straight ahead. We got good guys. We got bad guys. But that's not that interesting sometimes, you know, just like having, so you have to have like the good guys who are fighting the bad guys and also have to struggle with a different sort of bad. You know, it creates that extra level or layer of narrative tension that. I think at the very least, most like screenwriters are looking for, if no, if nothing else,

which is, which is, you know, where some of that comes from. But yeah, no, I mean, like, the, the vast majority of war films that you see now getting made are pretty straightforwardly anti-war. The, the best of them that aren't something like Haxaw Ridge, we didn't even talk about Haxon. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of Mel Gibson, you know, that is a, that is a movie that is deeply skeptical of war, the hero of it is a conscientious objector who does not pick up the rifle, you know, who does not pull the Sergeant York and instead is just kind of running around the battlefield helping people out. But it puts us in a, it puts us in a milieu where there is still lots of great action. And also Mel Gibson's again, weird kind of idiosyncrasies, the

floating over the Japanese, you know, camp is there committing ritual suicide because they have failed. Like, just, again, fascinating gibsonian tendencies in there. And on that note, the great sunny bunch host of Across the Movie Isle, the Bullwark goes to Hollywood, he's a Washington Post contributor. He's a great writer and critic of my friend. Thank you so much for joining the show. Yeah, thanks for having me on. This is a nebulous media production.

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