This Weekend’s Film Festival Contemplates Soldiers in Trouble

Lately soldiers have figured into several lineups for This Weekend's Film Festival. Inspired by the release of STOP-LOSS on DVD, this week's lineup takes a different approach to the soldier's story. All five films deal with soldiers' under threat of court martial. Some soldiers in the lineup are rebelling against orders they find unfair, while others were just following orders. Others are being investigated for murder, while others may lose years of their lives for petty crimes. The closing film puts its soldiers in the tough decision of being court-martialed for doing the wrong thing and the right thing. These feature lots of action and drama, while telling some unique stories about soldier experiences.

This week we kick off the lineup with the film that inspired it — STOP-LOSS. Of all the Iraqi War films to come out thus far, this one deals directly with a matter that is specific to this war. The practice of stop-loss allows the government to reassign a soldier to duty after their tour is up without their approval. Many see this as a backdoor draft. In the film, Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe) has served honorably and was looking forward to returning to civilian life when he is stop-lossed. Unhappy, he goes AWOL and heads out for Washington D.C. to convince a senator to help. King is torn between fighting the wrong that he believes the U.S. government is committing and his duty to his fellow soldiers, which includes angry Sgt. Steve Shriver (Channing Tatum) and troubled Tommy Burgess (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Director of BOYS DON'T CRY, Kimberly Peirce helms this tale, which observes the complex emotional strain these young soldiers are grappling with. As I said in my original review, "As the Vietnam draft did for the general public, this film argues that stop-loss is doing the same to the flag-wavers, shaking their faith."

A FEW GOOD MEN begins the Saturday doubleheader. As I said in my recent review, "In 1992, A FEW GOOD MEN just seemed like a good drama critiquing the alpha male attitude of the military, but now it seems to be critiquing something more insidious and disturbing." Set at Guantanamo Bay, the courtroom drama investigates the death of a soldier, which came as a result of soldier abuse. The question is whether officers ordered the abuse as a teaching method and then tried to cover it up once the plan went awry. Tom Cruise plays Navy lawyer Daniel Kaffee, a young hotshot who is known for trying to stay out of the courtroom. He is pitted against Col. Nathan Jessep, the grizzled leader of Gitmo, who wouldn't think twice about ripping your head off if you question his authority. Putting the strict code of honor of the marines into question, director Ron Reiner and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin craft a slick drama that features quotable dialogue and fiery performances. In retrospect, the film now allows us to reflect on a military culture that could easily be responsible for the many negative reports that feature Gitmo in the headline.

Closing Saturday is Norman Jewison's A SOLDIER'S STORY. Not only a great story about military culture, this murder mystery is an important film about race relations. As I said in my original review, "the story deals with racism from a black point of view. It really delves into how racism works on the psyche of the oppressed and how it shapes their self-image." Capt. Davenport (Howard E. Rollins Jr.) is assigned the case of the murder of Sgt. Waters (Adolph Caesar), a domineering officer who found pleasure in demeaning the men ranked below him. As white suspects are eliminated, Davenport looks closely at defiant and hotheaded Private Peterson (Denzel Washington). The gripping drama looks into how whites treat blacks and how that trickles down through the ranks of the black soldiers. The secrets that the black soldiers keep run deeper than simply hiding a murder so they aren't court martialed, but delve into the troubled waters of racial identity. A SOLDIER'S STORY powerfully addresses the question — who deserves to be called a member of the black community?

The first film of Sunday is Hal Ashby's THE LAST DETAIL. Navy seamen Billy "Bad Ass" Buddusky (Jack Nicholson) and Mate "Mule" Mulhall (Otis Young) have the unenviable duty of bringing 18-year-old court-martialed private Larry Meadows (Randy Quaid) to prison. At first Buddusky and Mule just want to get the task done and then party the rest of the time away, but the naïve Meadows gets to them and underlines the double standard between the rich and working-class stiffs. Meadows will loose eight years of his life for a minor offense, because his commanding officer has an agenda. Driven by a powerful performance from Nicholson, this character piece looks at the workingman and how he tries to cope with the hypocrisy in the world. These are soldiers who have not joined the military for noble reasons, but because it's better than being a TV repair man. As I said in my original review, "This bittersweet comedy can switch from laughs to tears from scene to scene. In that, this slice of life tale’s main theme becomes life in general."

THREE KINGS closes this week's lineup. David O. Russell's 1999 film is set at the close of the first Iraq War when Iraqi soldiers had stopped firing on American troupes and turned their attention to Iraqi rebels. During this chaos, four U.S. soldiers — Archie Gates (George Clooney), Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg), Chief Elgin (Ice Cube) and Conrad Vig (Spike Jonze) — follow a map found in the butt of an Iraqi solider to steal millions of dollars of gold stolen from Kuwait. In the process, the American soldiers meet Iraqi citizens and have their stereotyped views changed. With a unique bleached visual style, the dark satire questions American motives in the Middle East with the soldiers facing court martial whether they steal the gold or help the Iraqis to a refugee camp in Iran. Mixing humor with great action and drama, THREE KINGS is equally hilarious and thought provoking. As I said in my original review, "Like other great dark satires, the laughs are painted with great truth and irony to the point where if we weren’t laughing, we’d be crying."

So there you have it another week, another This Weekend's Film Festival. So it's time to head to the video store, update the Netflix queue, check out Zap2It.com for TV listings, or support the site by buy the films on DVD from the below links.