After doing a bunch of reviews, I realized I haven’t started a Fav Film list yet. So, here we go – and identifying only films that were released in the last 20 years, a series of my favorite picks from each of the major film genres. Starting off with…
War & Conflict
My four picks in the film genre of War & Conflict are Saving Private Ryan (1998), Gladiator (2000), Black Hawk Down (2001) and Braveheart (1995).
War movies weren’t quite in the vogue up till Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. There weren’t very many of such films to begin with outside a couple of critically acclaimed foreign-made ones like Das Boot and Stalingrad – both of which were German productions – and a few Hollywood productions, e.g. Glory.
Saving Private Ryan pretty much changed all that. The Omaha Beach Landing was the first and still possibly most visceral war scene ever shot on film, and there was no letup in the rest of the movie. The story concerned the efforts of a small section of soldiers, led by a Captain John Miller played by Tom Hanks, to pull out from the front-line a paratrooper who had just lost three brothers in the war. Spielberg’s intention wasn’t to glorify war in this movie but to honor the memory of what he regarded as the Greatest Generation.
I saw the film four times on the big screen in Singapore, and it left an indelible impression on me. It still remains the singularly most powerful and moving film I’ve seen in my life. Saving Private Ryan won Best Director and several other Oscars, but lost the Best Picture Oscar to the nice but ultimately trivial Shakespeare in Love in what I thought was the greatest ever let-down in the Academy Awards history.
Ridley Scott’s Gladiator followed 2 years thereafter, and revived another genre – the ‘Sword & Sandals’ epic that had been dead for a few decades at that point. The CG work for the Roman Coliseum wowed a lot of cinema viewers. The tale of revenge was simplistic, but benefited from Russell Crowe’s restrained number as the Roman General turned slave turned gladiator. He deservedly won a Best Actor award for it. Joaquin Phoenix as the sneering but semi-preadolescent Emperor Commodus hammed it up a little, but had scenes which were at least balanced by the statuesque Connie Nielsen (whatever happened to her in recent years LOL) who played his sister.
The historical background for Gladiator was largely hokey (e.g. Commodus really was a semi-benevolent ruler than a despot), but the production and sets weren’t. The film had great music by Hans Zimmer that sold a lot of CD copies, though subsequent films with music by Zimmer turned derivative.
Scott followed Gladiator with a second film set in pseudo-Africa but this time with a stronger historical premise: Black Hawk Down, based on Mark Bowden’s book of the same name, which in turn was an account of the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu when U.S. Army Rangers and SEALs engaged thousands of Somalis in a urban street battle in the city.
Scott didn’t bother too much with character development preferring instead to jump straight into the telling the story of the couple of days long battle between the two sides. The visuals and cinematography are amazing, as are the production sets. The film won a couple of technical Oscars.
The last film in my pick list is Braveheart which Mel Gibson both directed and lead-acted in. The film is loosely based on one historical Scottish hero, William Wallace, who is said to had led in open rebellion against the occupying English forces in 13th century Scotland. For a couple of years, this was the best film I’d watched until Saving Private Ryan in 1998.
Despite the severe changes made to the historical person, the themes of the story courage, honor, love and ultimately sacrifice are intricate and very obvious elements of the story-telling. The film was also nicely supported by some of the most beautiful music ever composed for the cinema. The end-titles of which is a favorite among film soundtrack recording orchestras.
The film had a great cast too: Gibson starred as Wallace, and his great acting will make you forgive his off and on Scot accent. French actress Sophie Marceau starred as the English Queen, and as the story in the film went does something absolutely scandalous with Wallace (though nothing liked this happened in history though).
That’s a wrap. For persons who have an aversion to bloody battle scenes and the like, should at least catch Braveheart still. At heart, the film is still a romantic drama.
Lastly, special mention also goes to a couple of War & Conflict films I’ve enjoyed over the last couple of years, especially Der Untergang, Sophie Scholl – Die letzten Tage, Schindler’s List (which I think belongs more towards the drama than war genre), and Client Eastwood’s pair of films on Iwo Jima: Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima.
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