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Good summary Joe

***It is very much the story of the battle - with little personal character development pretext or poitical subtext. If you can get into the soldier's preparations and a fairly literal playing out of a battle against hopeless odds its quite interesting.

I like this paragraph - this is the type of action that should allow a good director to REALLY open up, or bad one to fall onto his face. So I am now even more curious.


***But be warned - lots of people getting shot and blow up - but not in the pure shock value SPR manner or Schwarznegger good guys never get hit sort of way either. But it is bloody so in that regard it is quite Hollywood. In other words it is graphic rather than suggestive...

That is another interesting point. A short time ago I had the discussion with someone regarding the shocking schenes in good films. Violence and gore can be done many different ways. In that particular example the question was whether my wife found a brutal scene intollerable.

The reality thought is that for an adult the violence, if it is closely integrated into the plot is not in itself too objectionable, within limits. It becomes objectionable if it is simply gratuitous - for instance like that in the Hannibal, which I thought was a complete trash so the violence there just made it ever trashier, and that was not easy.

It seems like there is big difference between for instance how the battle scenes are presented in Full Metal Jacket, and the SPR. It is horrifying in its almost static power in the FMJ, and idiotic in the Ryan. Why? The first one uses shades, the second - primitive colors and crude brushwork.

The true horror of war and battle is never in the endless barrels of red paint. The true horror is always in the faces of the participants. In their eyes. In the trembling of their bodies. If that spells "subtlety" then it is because that IS the key.


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  • Good summary Joe - Victor Khomenko 15:42:45 01/23/02 (1)


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