| So-So Cinema |
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| written by talltale |
March 9, 2005 - 8:30 AM PST |
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1 out of 2 members found this review helpful
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I hate to disagree with so famous a personage as Jean-Luc Godard (see the close of the All Movie Guide description above), but Nicholas Ray n'est pas "cinema." Not for me, at least. Ray is no Sam Fuller, either--not that anyone asked him to be. But the comparison kept cropping up as I watched the recently released dvd of BITTER VICTORY, a World War II (Brits vs. Germans in Africa) drama that plods wearily along between its beginning/finale bookends that offer a romantic triangle to goose-up the plot.
Thoughts about cowardice and bravery, the unpleasantness of war and hypocrisy/denial raise themselves lethargically from time to time, to little effect. The movie does offer some fun for old-timers: Richard Burton is his youthful (pre-Cleo) days; a prior-to-ossification Curd Jurgens (back in the 50s, moviegoers knew him as "Curt"); Ruth Roman, wasted here as the romantic interest; Nigel Greene as a crazy-like-a-fox solider; and Christopher Lee, quiet and professional, just one year before "Horror of Dracula" changed his life. The black-and-white Cinemascope transfer is a good one, too.
Back to Mr. Fuller: after watching "Bitter Victory," imagine the pulsing life, snappy dialog and wickedly off-balance sense of good and bad that Sam might have brought to this enterprise. But, then, he probably wouldn't have been interested in a story this tired. |
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