DVD Quickie Reviews

THE DAY AFTER

Rating: TV

Some days, renting DVDs from NetFlix is a real revelation, and somedays it is just painful. When I was young, one of the networks put out a television movie as a "cautionary tale" about nuclear war called, "The Day After." I was too young for my parents to let me see it back then, but now that I am an old man (30), I figured it was time to become culturally literate.



Let me just say, cultural literacy is overrated. Watching this film is the equivilent of the ancient monks who used to whip themselves with cords in hopes of pleasing God and taking on the sins of the world. The film is a cruel attempt to make every viewer suffer as much as possible for the sin of electing Ronald Reagan. Every character is shallow, stupid, and nearsighted until after the bombs fall. Then, they are all equally hopeless. In the face of this, the science is also poor and little of it is explained. So, a film that is intended to inform and move people to action does little more than paralyze the viewer with depression and hopelessness.



Stay away from this film. In the age of possible nuclear terrorism, it is time to learn more about atomic and nuclear weapons. But stick to better films like DAY ONE which actually informs, while trying to move the viewer as well.



BASIC

Rating: R

Some "smart" action films attempt to challenge the intellect of their audience to follow the twists and turns as the characters graudally work their way thru the plot. But others are basically an excuse for the writer and director to jerk around the reader, while the producer giggles histerically at the confusion. BASIC is one of the latter.



The plot is that a group of Army Ranger Trainees are sent off on an impromptu training mission in the middle of a hurricane in Panama. While off on this mission, cut off from all communications, their instructor disappears and when a rescue chopper comes, they find the trainees firing on each other with live fire. Two survivors are brought back to base, and each tell a different story of what happened. When the on-base interrogator fails to get the truth out of them, a specialist (who is also an ex-Ranger) is called in to help. With mysterious results.



This is not a bad film. But not a great one either. If you want a film that'll challenge your intellect, go elsewhere. If you want a DIE HARD-esque adventure with little actual action, this is the film for you.



MASH

Rating: R

Some great films get greater with time and with immitation in later films. Others diminish with time. MASH, unfortunately, is one of these. MASH tells a series of comedic stories involving a group of irreverant surgeons in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital a few miles from the front line in the Korean War. The humor is subversive, the characters interesting, and the actors amazing. Most of the actors in this film went on to become some of the greater actors of their generation.



The problem is that the series that followed up the film is actually better than the original. The characters are deeper, the humor cleaner and funnier, and the pathos is certainly more up-front than in this movie. By about half-way through the film, I found myself watching and wondering when Allen Alda would show up. The pacing was simply too slow to hold the attention of the MTV generation.



Another great film to see from the perspective of cultural literacy, but not for much of any other reason.