Change Your Image
pdt1978
Reviews
Tears of the Sun (2003)
Doing the right thing without a Stars and Stripes to be seen
While it's far from classical film making I was quite surprised by how good I found this movie. My partner and I have both spent some time working in Africa and she has a special interest in human rights and humanitarian intervention. When we saw the preview for this movie we both let out audible groans and eyes were rolled aplenty: America saves everyone...again. The movie was immediately consigned to the "I wouldn't watch that if you paid me bin..." but we did watch it and we quite enjoyed it.
Aside from the slightly too sexual relationship between Willis and the doctor (they almost kiss - simply no need) the movie runs along pretty well and was by turns very tense, exciting and fairly moving.
Most importantly I felt it provided a thought provoking picture of what ethnic cleansing might really be like, something that film makers hesitate to explore. War time atrocities are one of those things that we all have a fair idea about but that are rarely portrayed. This movie did a VERY good job of describing awful atrocities without being overly gory or, worse, sensationalist and the use of humiliation and subordination as a weapon was subtly demonstrated.
Technical aspects aside the soldiers were convincingly concerned about the refugees without overt "We're all such goddamn heroes, aren't we?" posturing. All the major clichés were utterly avoided, not a single stars and stripes to be seen, not even the remotest hint of patriotic zeal, no mournful brass sections but plenty of Hans "I really need some new material after Gladiator" Zimmer's African melodies. The violence was visceral without being excessively bloody or stylised, and there was a sentimentality that deftly avoided being cheesy.
Most importantly Bruce Willis managed to avoid being Bruce Willis for 80% of the time.
The nearest thing I would compare this movie to is Black Hawk Down. However, BHD is wedged firmly in the action genre and this really isn't. Yup, there is shooting and violence in it but it manages to not be about that, which I think is a great thing.
My advice: grab the DVD version, watch the movie, then watch the trailer/previews included on the disk - you'll wonder if you were watching the same film, the trailer just does not do it justice.
War of the Worlds (2005)
A remake but not a rehash - spoilers
Full credit to Spielberg for trying to place a new perspective on this story but, for me, he failed to capture any of the desperation or dread of the original film and his new spin did not do the original material justice The nucleus of the original film is simply that, despite all of human kind's, well mainly mankind's, military achievements sometimes it is the small and apparently insignificant that triumphs.
Spielberg's film simply did not convey how utterly powerless the world's military might was against the alien insurgents. Because the extermination by the machines is carried out so quickly and effectively it is clear that the machines are unstoppable but just how unstoppable is not so clear. In the original movie the decision is finally made to use nuclear weapons, at that time still a relatively new development and so more awesome, but this also proves fruitless. However, in this film we see little of the military's defence of the planet and so cannot appreciate the invulnerability of the alien's machines. The audience could be forgiven for thinking that surprise had been their main weapon. This detracts from the power of the final message. However, I'm also fully aware that a lot of this ground has been trodden before, by the likes of the awful Independence Day, for example. I can completely understand Spielberg's desire to avoid any comparison to that film at all and that could explain the apparent neglect of even a whiff of a military struggle. Also, with regard to the small overcoming the larger and technically superior, I can see that too much banging of that drum could have been seen as an unfortunate allegory on terrorism, even bio-terrorism.
Instead Spielberg chooses to focus on the plight of three individuals. This is a fair direction to take but without a little more reinforcement of the original plot point, humankind's utter weakness even as a united entity, this emotional drama could have been played out against any backdrop.
Of course, having seen the original and so being aware of the aliens final demise I didn't have the luxury of a virgin viewer and so had no real anxiety about how it would turn out. Yet, for example, I watched the end of the Sixth Sense with a vague foreknowledge of the twist and I was still captured by the story.
One minor triumph however is the way events of the insurgency are told, or not told. At no time are we afforded a view of events beyond the immediate experience of the main leads and only then via interaction with another human being. In this way the utter chaos of the situation is portrayed by surrounding them with hundreds of people but utterly isolating them from any information or wider order, a truly terrifying prospect. For me this was not quite carried off but the intention was clear.
In some respects, given this information starvation and the small scale focus, I wonder if it might have just have been better to forego the final explanatory voice over, totally forget the how and why of the alien "defeat" and focus on the fact that Ray and his family survive, rather than having them make it to safety AFTER the turning of the tide. There the finale of the film is confused: did they make it home through tenacity and strength of human spirit or simply because the aliens were defeated? In line with the film's focus it should be the former but due to the "NO shields!" scene and the final voice over it comes across as the latter.
To sum up, I think the original film and story preys on our defencelessness and desperation as a species, and therein lies it's strength, but the new film focuses on the defencelessness and desperation of a few individuals and, in this day and age, I think individuals have plenty in their real domestic lives to threaten their health and well-being without the need to involve an alien insurgency.