Movies about War

Pearl Harbor I went to see Pearl Harbor the other day. It was a good film, but it was more about love than about war. There’s nothing wrong with than — I had just been expecting a little more about the war. Instead of being a movie primarily about the attack of the Japanese on Pearl Harbor, it was a film about a romance that happened to take place at that time, December 1941.

The scenes with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor are great. There’s some nice flying action in the film. It’s just a shame that they’ve made so many mistakes in the film. Take a look at this page to see a list of the embarrassing mistakes.

But despite the errors in the film, it’s still a good film. It was long — about three hours, and it covers a lot of ground, starting with the Battle of Britain, moving on to the Japanese attack, and ending with the Doolittle Raid. If you don’t like these American movies about their heroic soldiers, then don’t bother seeing this movie. And, by the way, all the girls in the theater was weeping at the end of the movie — I’ve never seen that before…

Thirteen Days Another film I’ve seen recently is Thirteen Days. I bought in on DVD yesterday. The film describes the Cuban Missile Crises in 1962 where the world was on the brink of a nuclear war. This film is about the crisis, and is not a love-story. The film shows how the Kennedy brothers were under a great press from the military to issue the orders for an airstrike against the missiles in Cuba. In the film we follow Kenny O’Donnell (Kevin Costner) who was one of JFK’s most trusted advisors. That gives us an in-side view of the conflict.

As we’re only allowed to see what the Kennedy brothers saw, the crisis is gradually built up until we reach the climax where the Americans decide to trust the back-channel contact that have approached them.

I likes the film a lot, perhaps because we’ve been studying the crisis in our History class. By seeing it on film it suddenly comes alive in a new way. And it’s also a much more correct film than Pearl Harbor, just take a look here to see for yourself. As I’ve bought it on DVD I had a chance to hear the producers talk about the film. They said that many of the cars, the photographs, etc used in the film is in fact the original objects. That’s pretty impressive.

3 Comments

  1. Martin Geisler Online » Happy Birthday Camilla!:

    [...] We finished the day by seeing IMDB:Thirteen Days (2000) which is a great movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, see my post about war movies for a longer review. After that we started to watch IMDB:Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001), but I went to bed before it was finished because it was getting really late. We’ve booked tickets for IMDB:Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) tomorrow night — I’m sure it will be fun! [...]

  2. John:

    I love historical period movies about war. In particular, WW II is my favorite. Saw Pearl Harbor when it first came out. The cinemaphotograpghy was excellent. I was truely impressed. I am very much looking forward to seeing Valkarie with Tom Cruise about the failed assasination plot against Hitler. Looks like it will be good.

    John

    http://weirdsciencekids.com

  3. John:

    Took your advice and put 13 days on our Netflicks list. Sounds like one I would like.

    John
    http://www.weirdsciencekids.com

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