Reeling Backward: "Angels One Five" (1952)

"Angels One Five" is one of those war movies in which it's fairly difficult to capture an actual glimpse of war.

Except for a few aerial combat scenes toward the end -- poorly staged with static planes superimposed against a background, models and repetitious shots of an aircraft turning into the camera -- you'd barely know the pivotal Battle of Britain was occurring before our very eyes.

Mostly, "Angels One Five" concerns itself with the grounded portion of the lives of British air pilots at one airfield along the English Channel, particularly the daring squadron that dubs itself the Pimpernels. They drink enthusiastically -- often right before taking to the air -- carouse with whatever few women are on hand, and engage in a whole lot of high-spirited banter in between missions.

When one of their number perishes, which is fairly often, his passing is barely commented upon, beyond him being a good lad who put on a good show before spiraling in.

Indeed, when we first meet the squadron they are literally wrestling like boys at the officers' club, piling onto each other in their shirtsleeves and socks like preadolescents at day camp. This includes their boss, Group Commander Captain Small (Jack Hawkins), known universally by his call sign of "Tiger." Except, of course, he doesn't fly anymore,

There's some vague intimation of him being grounded by injury, and the Tiger appears to leap at any opportunity to prove his manhood, such as challenging pilots 20 years his junior to a footrace, or literally shoving aside a machine gunner when the field is under attack so he can "poop off" (his words) at some jerries,

Hawkins, of course, was a very big deal in English cinema roundabouts 1952, and one of the movie's biggest problems is it can't decide who it wants the protagonist to be. The Tiger would seem to suit the bill, but he disappears for large stretches of the movie, and of course he never gets airborne. (Not that the actual pilots seriously outdistance him in this regard.)

I think the real main character is supposed to be T.B. Baird, soon callsigned "Septic," the new squadron pilot whose upper lip is stiffer than most, even by British war film standards. Played by John Gregson, he's a medical student who gave up his studies to fight in the war, and seems to have studied the operations manual backward and forward without ever gaining a real grasp of what it's like to be in combat.

His arrival is inauspicious. He's flying in one of three badly needed replacement Hurricanes. But a veteran pilot returning from a combat mission with an inoperable radio lands cross-wind of him, forcing Baird to pull up to avoid a collision and consequently crash-land on the doorstep of Barry Clinton (Cyril Raymond), the good-natured chief of the operations center. This is the underground HQ that dispatches orders to all the flights and charts their path on the inevitable gargantuan map we always see in this type of war picture.

For mysterious reasons, Baird is blamed for damaging the airplane (and himself, slightly) and ordered to take a seat in the operations bunker with Clinton. During that time he gets to know his superior officer and his wife, Mrs. Clinton (Dulcie Gray), who is stout and resolute and will invariably be referred to as "a remarkable woman."

The remarkable woman also sets Baird up with another one of her kind, Betty Carfax (Veronica Hurst), who drives an ambulance for the war effort. In two scenes they manage to fall in love, about par for the course in this kind of movie, and you just know somebody is doomed.

For all the considerable mayhem, the characters remain annoyingly chipper. I realize this is the image the Brits like to present of themselves, particularly in times of turmoil. But even by that standard the people seem so oblivious to the horrors of what's transpiring that they begin to seem dumb, or at least smashingly callous.

The Blitz was not exactly tea and biscuits, you know.

Peter Moon (Michael Denison) competes for screen time as Clinton's predecessor as head of operations, who later gets promoted to commander of the Pimpernels after the old one buys it. There are actually a great deal of similarities between him and Baird -- both earnest, tightly-wound men who suffer during their time on the ground, eager to get into the skies and prove their stuff. I'm surprised director George More O'Ferrall and screenwriter Derek N. Twist didn't combine the characters.

The enemy remain faceless and vague, just a few references during strategy meetings to let us know how badly the Brits are outnumbered by the Germans (five planes to one) plus the fleeting glimpses of bombers and a (very) few fighters during the brief, unconvincing combat sequences.

I've never been in war, but I've watched a lot of war movies and thus I know the first thing you have to do for them to be effective is establish the foe, or at least the circumstances lined against the heroes, as distinct and formidable. With all these smiling Englanders having a grand time talking about combat but rarely engaging in it, "Angels One Five" fails its first lesson and (nearly literally) never takes flight.

Reeling Backward: "The League of Gentlemen" (1960)

There was a time when Jack Hawkins was Britain's top movie star. This might not seem likely, since he didn't get serious about acting until he was about 40 and, while certainly handsome, his bulldog-like visage did not naturally lend itself to romantic or leading roles.

Nevertheless, his skills as a thespian kept him quite busy in movie-making even after his star fell, usually in supporting roles as authoritarian figures -- sometimes deluded ones -- in "The Bridge on the River Kwai," "Lawrence of Arabia" and many others. A heavy smoker, Hawkins even continued to act after having his larynx removed in 1965 due to throat cancer; other actors dubbed his lines until his death at age 62.

"The League of Gentlemen" represents one of his few post-1950s leading roles. It's a bank heist movie directed by Basil Dearden with a distinctive, clever twist: the robbers are not professional criminals but former British military officers who have fallen on hard times. Not only is it a chance for the eight men to collect £100,000 each -- about $2 million in today's dollars -- but they get to use their wartime skills in a peacetime setting.

As Lt. Col. Norman Hyde, Hawkins is the unctuous brains of the operation. The only one lacking a criminal record or black mark on his military dossier, he's incensed at being cashiered after 25 years of loyal service, dismissed "redundant." He certainly doesn't appear to want for money -- Hyde lives in a large, secluded mansion and drives a Rolls-Royce. In the film's tipsy opening sequence, he emerges from a sewer grate at night wearing a natty black tuxedo.

There appears to be more backstory there, but screenwriter John Boland, adapting the novel by Bryan Forbes, purposefully keeps it close to the vest. Hyde lives alone, out of choice rather than economic necessity, and lets the dishes pile up in the kitchen. There is a large portrait of a handsome woman in the foyer -- actually Deborah Kerr -- and when asked if she is his wife and is she alive, he announces, "Regrettably, the bitch is still going strong."

Testy language for 1960! I was also surprised by a brief shot of a chestful of nudie magazines, with bare breasts clearly visible.

Hyde researches the military records to find the perfect other seven men for the job:

• Lt. Edward Lexy (Richard Attenborough ... I know, I'm fixated) -- Radio man and somewhat weaselly ladies' man.
• Maj. Peter Race (Nigel Patrick) -- An itinerant gambler and black marketeer of impeccable breeding, he becomes Hyde's second-in-command after an initial antagonism.
• Captain "Padre" Mycroft (Roger Livesey) -- A quartermaster dismissed for gross indecency, he now impersonates a priest.
• Maj. Rupert Rutland-Smith (Terence Alexander) -- A decent, reserved chap kept economic cuckold by his wealthy, younger wife.
• Capt. Frank Weaver (Norman Bird) -- Bomb disposal leader who was drunk when his squad was blown up.
• Capt. Stevens (Kieron Moore) -- Ousted for homosexuality -- "odd man out" is how Hyde describes him, in the only suitable language for the time -- he's reliable muscle.
• Capt. Martin Porthill (Bryan Forbes) -- Booted for killing Greek separatists, he now sponges off older women.

Despite a limited amount of time to personalize each character, the actors do a wonderful job of building a distinctive persona that allows them to stand out from each other. Attenborough and Livesey in particularly are quite charismatic, in very different ways. Livesey steals the show in a sequence where they impersonate active-duty military officers to steal arms from the local army station. He pretends to be a general and uses the opportunity to lord it over Hyde and Race.

There's a lovely fun scene where Hyde first gathers them all at a swanky club, after having invited them to read an American pulp fiction novel, "The Golden Fleece," that describes exactly the sort of bank robbery Hyde is proposing. After declaring them all "crooks of one sort or another," he proceeds to detail each man's shame individually, and then declare the operation as their chance to get their revenge on the system that betrayed them.

The rest of the movie proceeds as a fairly typical crime caper: the planning of the job, brushes with danger, internal conflicts between the men, followed by the actual heist itself. It goes off perfectly, but their little company -- which they cheekily dub "Co-Operative Removals Ltd." -- is betrayed by the one small detail they overlooked.

British movies were not covered by the Hollywood Production Code, in which lawbreakers always had to be shown receiving their comeuppance. But that appears to be the case with "The League of Gentlemen," in which they are all carted off in the same policy lorry at the end.

The robbery scene is almost anticlimactic. It's mostly notable for the scary-looking gas masks the men wear after smoking out the whole block around the bank. Complete with breathing tubes and a metallic voice projection device used by Hyde, they make for a positively frightening bunch.

I enjoyed "League" for what it is, a rapscallion crime caper, though I admit to being a bit disappointed that it was not what I thought it would be. I expected a harder-edged serious crime drama, something like Stanley Kubrick's early work, in which Hyde is consumed by rage at British societal structure and bent on revenge.

But this isn't existential crisis; it's fun 'n' games. That's all well and fine, but I'd like to see the version where Hawkins gets to play a homicidal maniac in a tux.

Reeling Backward: "Malta Story" (1953)

We don't think about it much now because he became so iconic for his roles in David Lean epics and "Star Wars," but Alec Guinness was quite the odd duck for a movie star. "Malta Story" features him at perhaps his duckiest.

He was nobody's idea of a classically handsome, jaw-jutting leading man. Guinness had a thin face with protruding eyes that often appeared shifty, as if he was unwilling to look at people straight on. He held his small, tight mouth in a querulous state of flux, the corners slyly upturned as if he was protecting a private joke.

Guinness could seem both peevish and bemused at the same time, so it's not surprising that for the early stretch of his career he was best known for comedy.

Nonetheless, in 1951 British movie theater exhibitors voted Guinness the top male star of the year. And he would soon begin to rack up an impressive array of dramatic roles, culminating in "The Bridge on the River Kwai," which won him a well-deserved Best Actor Oscar.

"Malta Story" tells the story of the Siege of Malta, a little-known bit of World War II history (at least in America) through the eyes of a British reconnaissance pilot, Peter Ross. On his way to being stationed in Cairo to help scout out Rommel's desert forces, he's trapped on the island when his transport plane is bombed on a layover, and soon is conscripted into the local British forces, who are hungry for able pilots.

People with even a passing knowledge of geography know Sicily as the large land mass off of Italy -- the misshapen "ball" getting the "boot" from the mainland. Malta is a tiny crumb of land further along the same trajectory, known mainly on this side of the pond for its cinematic association with a certain fictional falcon.

But in the Mediterranean theater of war prior to the arrival of the Americans, Malta was a small but pivotal linchpin in the Allied plans. Sitting more or less in the middle of the sea, it provided a perfect location from which the British could stage naval and aerial attacks against the German convoys carrying troops and equipment to Rommel.

The Germans, well aware of this, made every attempt to dislodge them. The native Maltese suffered terribly in the incessant bombing campaign and naval blockade, scrabbling for food by day and digging the dead out of the rubble at night.

When Ross arrives, the Air Commodore (the redoubtable Jack Hawkins) is at wits' end. They barely have enough aircraft to carry out defensive patrols, and not enough petrol from them to linger for very long. So when he gets his hands on an experienced reconnaissance pilot, he soon puts him to good use.

Ross' daring missions, following his instincts instead of the letter of his orders, lead to a mild rebuke that soon gives way to high praise for the valuable intelligence they bring in.

The British forces suffer multiple setbacks -- at one point they finally receive a flight of new Spitfire fighter planes, nearly half of which are immediately destroyed in a German raid. But gradually, achingly, they manage to make up ground, and eventually take the fight to the Axis.

Director Brian Desmond Hurst and screenwriter Nigel Balchin throw in a romance between Ross and a local girl named Maria (Muriel Pavlow) who works in the RAF headquarters. It's a pretty standard mid-century screen affair, with the only trouble coming in the form of Maria's traditionalist mother (Flora Robson). Later her heart is broken when it's revealed her son has been spying for the Italians.

The movie's biggest problem is the focus swings back and forth between the war campaign, the romance and the family intrigue, and without much rhyme or reason. The Hawkins character more or less takes over the second half of the movie, and as a reconnaissance pilot Ross doesn't have any role to play in the actual fighting. If it weren't for the insipid love affair, there wouldn't be any reason for the Ross character to hang around at all.

Speaking of the battle scenes, they're a combination of stock footage, models and recreations using actual aircraft and ships. The mix is generally pretty good, though the model planes are easy to spot.

Director Hurst initially didn't want to cast Guinness, who he pegged as not a leading man type. But the actor was persistent. "I am tired of playing funny little men," Guinness said, according to the director's website.

Apparently, the cinematic world agreed. Although "Malta Story" wasn't the film to do it, Alec Guinness would soon be known for much more than being silly.

Video review: "Lawrence of Arabia: 50th Anniversary Edition"

“Nothing is written,” T.E. Lawrence famously says. But almost from the moment “Lawrence of Arabia” hit theaters in 1962, it seemed destined to become one of the most iconic films ever made.

It is by most reckonings the pinnacle of the epic movie-making impulse that surged in the 1950s and ‘60s – a grand, lush drama filled with exotic foreign trappings and a history-making tale to tell. It won a slew of awards, including the Best Picture Oscar, and deserved them all.

A restoration of director David Lean’s masterpiece was released in theaters in 1989 – one of the last films distributed in a 70mm print. Now, a new digital remastering from the original film negative has been completed for the movie’s 50th anniversary. After a brief theatrical run, it debuts in two Blu-ray collections.

The story is familiar to any serious film-lover: an oddball British lieutenant (Peter O’Toole) is plucked from obscurity during World War I to act as liaison to the disparate Arabic desert tribes, and ends up forging them into a united army that helps take down the Turkish Empire. As he becomes a famous and charismatic figure, Lawrence finds his sanity crumbling as his lust for power grows.

“Lawrence” has seen a number of video editions, but this represents its first time on Blu-ray. For comparison, I popped in my copy of the film from its 2001 DVD edition and then watched the same scenes on the new Blu-ray. The gap between the two was simply astonishing.

Of course, the image was much crisper and cleaner in the higher-resolution Blu-ray based on Sony’s 4K remastering. But what really struck me were the colors, which were dazzlingly vibrant in the new edition.
If you thought the golden sands and aching blue skies of the desert looked good before, you won’t believe how much they leap off the screen of the Blu-ray. When Lawrence first dons his white Arabic robes, it seemed like O’Toole was standing right before me.

Of course, it comes with a host of extra features – some seen before in previous editions, and some all-new. The highlight is a new graphic-in-picture track that allows the viewer to learn about the customs and rituals of the desert tribes. There is also a featurette featuring O’Toole looking back on the film, newsreel footage of its New York premiere, and more.

The 50th Anniversary Edition is available as either a two-disc version or the four-disc Gift Set. Opt for the latter, and you’ll receive several more featurettes, a never-before-seen deleted scene and conversations with Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese.

The Gift Set also comes with a handsome 88-page coffee table book, a CD of Maurice Jarre’s unforgettable musical score (including previously unreleased tracks) and an authentic 70mm film frame (newly printed and numbered).

“Lawrence of Arabia” has never looked so good.

Movie: 4 stars out of four
Extras: 4 stars

Reeling Backward: "No Highway in the Sky" (1951)

"No Highway in the Sky" was an early progenitor of the disaster flick genre, and quite possibly the first film ever made about a commercial airliner in peril. A quarter-century later, this sort of thing would become fodder for a movie-going public with a ferocious appetite for things that crash, burn, erupt or sink. Of course, then came the inevitable "Airplane" spoofs, followed by the whole thing coming full circle with modern plane disasters like "Red Eye," "Air Force One" and "Flightplan."

The latter picture most resembles "No Highway in the Sky," in that it's about a socially awkward scientist trying to convince everyone that the airplane is unsafe and must turn back, immediately. No captain every follows this advice, at least in the movies.

I imagine the film was quite bothersome to the nascent commercial airline companies when it came out in 1951, especially with that title explicitly contrasting the safety of the American highway to the dangerous, untested machines hurtling through the air. Within a few years flying would surpass driving as the preferred -- and safest -- mode of long-distance transportation. 

Jimmy Stewart plays Theodore Honey, a British scientist -- with a curiously absent English accent -- working for a large airline company, the Royal Aircraft Establishment. This is not exactly a plausible-sounding name for a real company, but then "No Highway in the Sky" is a pretty awful-sounding title, too. The film is based on the book by Nevil Shute, adapted for the screen by R.C. Sherriff, Oscar Millard and Alec Coppel, and helmed by journeyman director Henry Koster.

Honey is a widower who lives alone with his 12-year-old daughter Elspeth (Janette Scott), wears only one suit and can't remember the number of the apartment where he has lived for the past eight years. It's the classic cinematic genius archetype, his head so filled with physics and high-end mathematics that the mundane challenges of the workaday world leave him baffled.

Honey is running an experiment about the reliability of the tail section of the new "Reindeer" propeller airliner. He's convinced that metal fatigue will cause the tail to fall off after 1,440 hours of flight time, based on his calculations. One Reindeer already crashed under mysterious circumstances, and Honey is sure it was the tail section that caused it.

His experiment involves shaking a Reindeer tail in a laboratory to see if it'll snap off. Unfortunately, he's only allowed to run the vibrating machine for eight hours a day, due to noise complaints from the neighbors. It seems like Honey's only function is waiting around in that vast hangar, hoping the tail will split off.

He's recruited by a new forward-thinking company executive (Jack Hawkins) to fly out to the site of the Reindeer that crashed. Honey resists at first, saying that scientists must concern themselves with facts and not be swayed by the emotional factor of human lives and relationships. Indeed, Honey had not even told anyone about his theory that the tail sections will fall off until the exec questioned him about his work.

Honey has, in fact, never even flown on a plane before -- I enjoyed Stewart's gangly crab-walk up the boarding stairs, like a man suddenly plopped on the moon and told to traverse the foreign landscape. In fact, well into the flight he learns that the plane is in fact a Reindeer, and one of the oldest ones with more than 1,400 hours of flight time.

Honey appeals to the captain to turn back -- we already know how that ruena out -- and then turns his attentions to two women aboard the flight. Marjorie (Glynis Johns), a young and helpful stewardess (don't bark, that's what they called them then) tries to control the situation of a passenger causing a panic. The other is Monica Teasdale, played by the great Marlene Dietrich, a famous movie star. Because Honey's deceased wife adored Teasdale's pictures, he tries to warn her about their impending doom. The actress at first is put off by this strange man, but then puts faith in his analytical mind. When the plane lands without incident, though, she dismisses him.

Dietrich's character is really unessential to the story, but having her around jazzes things up. Dietrich -- 50 years old and without a line on her iconic face -- has a mesmerizing effect on any film, and her presence is used to good effect here.

Honey sabotages the plane by pulling up the landing gear while it's grounded, causing it to collapse and be destroyed. The last third or so of the movie is concerned with the aftershocks of this incident, in which Honey is accused of insanity and ineptitude. In an unlikely turn of events, Marjorie comes to live with Honey and his daughter, taking care of them during his travails.

The plot is pretty contrived hokum, even by the standards of a nascent airline industry that was uncharted territory for 1951 audiences. In the end, of course, Honey is proved right all along and vindicated.

The airline honchos, played by Hawkins and Ronald Squires, seem awfully accommodating to an oddball egghead whose ideas are threatening a major blow to their company's reputation and financial standing. As the inquiry commences and the pressure mounts, they're shown to be firmly in Honey's corner, if trying not to be too obvious about it. Perhaps my own encounters with the corporate world of late have left me cynical, but I doubt men in their position would be doing anything other than frantically covering their own tail sections.

I should note that the airplane is a model, both in its ground scenes and in the air, and not very convincing in either case. When Honey collapses the Reindeer, part of the engine tears open to reveal a hollow wooden frame. The passenger compartment and especially the cockpit are laughably cavernous -- the pilot and co-pilot are joined by no less than three other officers working their own stations along a corridor between the pilots' seats and the passenger cabin.

"No Highway in the Sky" is notable for its nascent depiction of both airline travel and disaster film dynamics. Unfortunately, it's not very skilled at executing either one.

2 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "The Bridge on the River Kwai"

When you are a film critic, the one question you dread getting in social situations is, "So what's your favorite movie?"

People are invariably disappointed when I give vague, wishy-washy answers like, "Well, I love so many!" or "It's just impossible to choose." I suspect that chefs can readily tell you their favorite dish, and sports columnists don't hesitate to name the athlete they most admire. People don't like it when those who are supposed to be experts fudge on a pretty fundamental question.

The truth is my tastes have evolved over time. If you'd asked me the "favorite film" question when I was 14 or 15, I think I would have said "Blade Runner" without much pause. That one's still near the top of my list, although the themes of alienation and dehumanization that seem so important when you're a teen are less forceful now.

But I think I can say that however my list of favorites has shuffled over the years, "The Bridge on the River Kwai" has consistently remained very high. At this particular moment in time, I'd probably call it the film I most admire.

"Bridge" was directed by the great David Lean from a screenplay (by Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman) based on the novel by Pierre Boulle. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards for 1957, and won seven, including Best Picture, Director, Cinematography, Editing, Musical Score and Best Actor for Alec Guinness. It also won Best Screenplay, but as Wilson and Foreman were blacklisted at the time, they received no onscreen credit. Their Oscars arrived posthumously in 1984, and their names are listed in the restored edition of the film.

It's a rousing prisoner-of-war picture, with the usual heroic Allies showing terrific resolve in the face of their dastardly captors. But I think why the film stands up for me is that it's really about self-delusion. All of the main characters are in some way compromised, a combination of good and evil tendencies. I would go so far as to argue that Col. Nicholson, the British commander of the Allied prisoners, is the real villain of the piece.

Think about it: Nicholson is prepared to have himself and all of his other officers shot dead rather than perform manual labor at the insistence of Col. Saito (Sessue Hayakawa, who was the only Oscar nominee from the film who failed to take home a statue). Later, after winning his contest of wills with Saito -- by nearly suffocating to death in a tin "hot box" -- Nicholson undertakes the task of building a railway bridge for the Japanese with such misguided enthusiasm that he becomes a collaborator with the enemy.

As the bridge approaches its deadline and it's clear they will not finish in time, Nicholson orders his officers to do manual labor -- the same principle he was willing to die over. He even cajoles the sick men to hobble away from the hospital and lend a hand, too.

In his final act, Nicholson nearly upsets a plan by British commandos to blow up the bridge right as the first train steams over it. So invested has Nicholson become in the bridge, in what it represents to his ideals, that he alerts the Japanese soldiers and even struggles with one of the commandos. The bridge demolition still goes through -- in a spectacular cinematic display, in which Lean actually destroyed a real bridge and train -- but three of the four commandos are killed, including Maj. Shears (played by William Holden), who had previously escaped from the same prison camp.

Through it all, Nicholson is convinced that he's doing the right thing. He sees the bridge construction as a way to restore order and pride to his soldiers, who have become a rabble. Later, he sees it as a symbol of defiance against the enemy, to build a better bridge than they could themselves. The film is a lesson in how a series of decisions, each of which seems sound, can add up to calamity. I think our country's involvement in Iraq is a modern example.

A few other thoughts on the film:

I must have seen it a half-dozen times before I caught on to the subtle portrayal of Saito. A proud man, he is utterly crushed when Nicholson succeeds in building the bridge that he could not. There's also a bit near the end where Saito is shown cutting off his Bushido topknot, and slipping a dagger into his uniform right before the bridge's dedication. It seems clear now that Saito intended to kill Nicholson, or himself, or possibly one and then the other. Only the complication of Nicholson spotting the demolition wiring prevents this.

Shears, the ostensible American protagonist of the film, is a fraud, liar, impersonator and suck-up. He bribes the Japanese guards for favorable treatment, treats the arrival of Nicholson with great cynicism, and seems bent on doing anything to save his own skin. He only agrees to join the commandos when faced with court-martial and imprisonment for impersonating an officer. If he's supposed to represent the Yanks, we don't come off too great.

The use of the "Colonel Bogey March" musical theme throughout the film is interesting. It's an act of defiance by the British prisoners, but also illustrative of Nicholson's delusion. During the opening scene, where they're marching into camp for the first time, the men are whistling the tune. Slowly, the musical score takes up the melody until it sounds like a grand marching band booming away. This coincides with the shift to Nicholson's perspective. Despite the sorry state of his men, many of them marching barefoot, he still views them as British soldiers, brave and true.

(The tune really was used by Allied soldiers during WWII, who came up with some vulgar lyrics, including the revamped title, "Hitler Has Only Got One Ball." The film's soldiers were to sing these lines -- which continue, "Goring has two but very small; Himmler is somewhat sim'lar, and poor Goebbels has no balls at all!" -- but producer Sam Spiegel felt they were too vulgar, so they came up with the whistling instead.)

The film ends with the British doctor, having just watched the train wreck and the deaths of Nicholson and the commandos, shouting "Madness, madness" into the jungle air. To those who think war is great, it's an apt indictment.

4 stars