Five favorite war movies

I like that you started with "and". That means you agree with my premise.

"Act of Valor" is the 21st century version of the "Green Berets".

 

I agree with it to the extent that 'The Green Berets' is a chickenhawking piece of fascist agitprop worthy of every political, practical and aesthetic contempt. Plus which, Jim Hutton doing anything but screwball comedy is an affront to man and God.

 

Yeah. Bob Newhart in Catch-22 is a more realistic army officer than Jim Hutton.

Green Berets is one of those fascinating films, though. I watch it nearly every time I come across it expecting to find that I missed something or misjudged it, but it's really terrible.

 

My eighth grade teacher was as chickenhawk as they come and he showed us The Green Berets because it was his favorite movie. Even as an eighth grader I knew it sucked.

 

Like the song, it's a fascinating document of its time. So richly fake, so obviously, earnestly phony it proves the opposition's case against it every time you see it.

 

As you may know, there is a scene in "The Green Berets" is which the sun is depicted as setting in the East.

 

Not a lot different than many WW II movies of the time, except that WW II was a "popular" war. Sands of Iwo Jima
is not much different when it comes down to it.

 

But 'Sands' came out in 1949. It wasn't made as a piece of current events propaganda. Lots of movies were, certainly, but what Wayne was trying to do with 'Berets' was straight-up right wing bullshit, no better than the 5 o'clock follies.

 

That's a good one, Boom.

 

War movie I forgot that's a really good Vietnam movie:

We Were Soldiers Once

 

That was on my top 5. The book was even better.

 

Liked them both. That had some real drama.