Cape Fear - very good but not so the remake. Certainly agree with the 'suspending disbelief' thing. In the Cape Fear remake for example they have a couple of heavies beat De Niro with iron bars, but just to show how tough he is he ignores that and takes them out. OK tough, but if you get hit by iron bars you are likely to break, regardless of how tough you are! However the one film that really gets to me in terms of suspend belief is Saving Private Ryan. Now I was prepared to accept that film as a good piece of entertainment which I very much enjoyed when I first saw it - as entertainment. But over time it acquired this mystique about being almost documentary-like in accuracy, and that you didn't need to go any further to know exactly what it's like to be 'in action'. I even heard it was being shown in history lessons in the States. Well history it is not, and yet there are so many who will not accept that Spielberg used his screen mastery here to elicit an emotional response from the audience - and does it very well - but that does not make the film more accurate! I'm going to stop here because it always winds me up how people, faced with overwhelming historical and military evidence to the contrary, completely ignore it. As I said, nothing against the film originally, but certainly against what it's been built up to be. Finally Last of the Mohicans - actually very much enjoyed it, again as entertainment. There was one bit where I didn't have to suspend belief, much to the film's credit. There's a part where the survivors of the massacre are hiding under a waterfall and Magua (great performance by Wes Studi) finds them. Hawkeye doesn't do some kind of ninja superman defence and wipe them all out - he runs away. Cynically you could argue it sets up the later scene in the village, but as a scene it really works. It's got a great soundtrack too. NB my favourite soundtrack is probably The Good The Bad and The Ugly.
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Long fight scenes are such bull****. Read the Illiad. Typical fight = one spear thrust. I have to admit the biggest historical inaccuracy of Last of the Mohicans disappeared when I realized the hero was picking up muskets in succession and firing them once. I'll have to watch it again, since I've been reading up on Indians till the cows come home. Yeah, most of the Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns were outstanding. I really liked "Ran", Kurosawa's remake of Lear. It was the best cinematography I think I've ever seen. The best war movie I've seen, which supposedly Spielberg used to inspire parts of "Saving Private Ryan," was a Russian film translated as "Come and See." It begins with three guys and a kid who are half fighting in the resistance against the Nazi invasion, and half going on a drunken spree; wandering around with a couple of guns and a bottle, getting drunk and trying to kill people. Two of the guys get killed, and the third, the kid's dad, gets the idea of kidnapping a cow at gunpoint. Why? Because he wants some milk. So he and the kid start to milk the cow, but there's an artillery barrage, and the guy is blown sky high. The kid goes on milking the cow. It's only when the cow dies and the kid can't get a drink of milk that the kid cries. In about six months, the kid, now maybe twelve, has become an excellent guerilla fighter. As the Nazis retreat, the partisans capture a bunch of them. One group of the partisans think they should kill all the Nazis immediately. They're the moderates. I don't know how accurate the film really is. But it convinces you this is what total war is really like.
Yes there was more than three Welshmen there but not more VC awards for the Welsh. In fact two I think. But hey it was for the British Empire so what does it matter?
Alfred Henry Hook VC was not a convicted criminal. He was a very quiet Gloucestershire teetotaller but depicted as a hard drinking barrack room Cockney lawyer in the film. His granddaughters walked out in disgust at the premiere. Yes I've said there were more than three Welshmen but only two were awarded the VC out of the eleven.
