“Beware Greeks bearing gifts,” became a saying thousands of years ago. Historians today trace it to tales of the Trojan War, which may not have really happened. Or if it did, not all the details presented by the blind poet Homer were part of the true story. Specifically, the saying was aimed at the Trojan Horse Odysseus created near the end of the Trojan War that allowed the Greeks to invade the impenetrable city of Troy. Oddly enough, this point—which comes in late in the movie, “Troy”—somehow makes the story of Achilles and Hector seem less real (even without the gods and goddesses), taking away from all the events that have led up to this part of the film and making it more of a story. In all the tales I remember reading as a kid, the story of the wooden horse fooling the Trojans was truly cool. However, after watching the movie, ...

  England- 1944. Major Reisman (Marvin) a smart but insubordinate trouble-maker is forcefully given a difficult and politically uncomfortable mission by General Worden (Borgnine): take a group of military prisoners who are on death row or have long-term prison sentences and build them into a capable team. Once the group is together, they’ll be given a high-risk mission to go behind German lines and destroy a chateau that is frequented by German generals. Reisman is able to build the unstable group (with much flack from his superior officers) into a cohesive unit through his leadership skills and the offer of commuted sentences to the team. As the group heads off on their mission, a few loose cannons (particularly Telly Savalas as a wacko who thinks his violence toward women is dictated by God) threaten to ruin the entire enterprise. Director Aldrich’s extremely popular war film boasts one of the most impressive big-name male casts in ...

  “The Last Samurai” is a sweeping, sprawling epic devoted to character, a specific geographical location and a mindset locked in a moment of time. Tom Cruise stars as Captain Nathan Algren, a tortured soldier who served under Colonel George Armstrong Custer in the genocidal battles against the Cheyenne American Indians. During his time with Custer, Algren got to know the Cheyenne and grew to respect their way of life. Under the leadership of Lieutenant Colonel Bagley (played with surprising ease by Tony Goldwyn), Algren was responsible for the deaths of many American Indian women and children in an outright massacre. Tormented and haunted by those memories, Algren has become a lost soul seeking solace in liquor. However, his life changes radically when he becomes part of a military detachment sent by the United States President to Japan, where American political and business interests hope to open up Japanese markets once they get the ...

  tanley Kubrick’s idiosyncratic war film, “Full Metal Jacket” was released during 1987’s upsurge of interest in Viet Nam films (following “Platoon” and “Heartbreak Ridge” in release and preceding “Hamburger Hill”), and finds the visionary director bringing his own fascinations and interests to a fairly simple story. The film follows private Joker (Modine) through an intense, dehumanizing basic training camp where he is put at odds with demonic drill instructor Hartman (Ermey) and befriends the troubled private Pyle (D’Onofrio). Later, while in Viet Nam, Joker and his platoon are caught up in the Tet offensive and during maneuvers and are pinned by a sniper after taking a wrong turn. “Full Metal Jacket,” while a Vietnam film, is told in a much more archetypal way, leaving almost all the political and cultural background out of the main body of the story. Those aspects combined with its non-tropical filming locales (it was filmed almost entirely in the ...