War flicks shoddier than most Iraqi body armor

By Anthony Gigantino
Collegian Staff
March 22, 2006

The 2005 Oscars proved that movies are headed in the wrong direction, with no sign of a cultural resurgence. After watching B-rate blonde Reese Witherspoon take Best Actress and the Three Six Mafia win Best Original Song for a track entitled “It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp,” I pondered what else American movie fans could possibly endure. Then, I saw Jarhead. This atrocious portrayal of Operation Desert Storm made me realize that I can always rely on preposterous combat films to poison the big screen pixels. Here is a list of some of Hollywood’s worst attempts at portraying war throughout the last 50 years.

Red Dawn. Arguably the worst movie of all time. I had the unfortunate pleasure of being born in 1984, the same year Ronald Reagan declared this masterpiece his favorite flick. Does anyone else find it ridiculous that America was saved by Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen, or that the Soviet Red Army and Nicaraguan Sandinistas failed to defeat eight high schoolers who had never shot guns before?

The Green Berets. Mix an over-the-hill John Wayne with a Vietnam full of lush pine trees, and you get this 1968 pro-Nam disaster. Wayne’s appeal to the American public’s growing dissidence of the war failed miserably. The Duke’s worst film ever is a disgrace to every American who ever served in the Marines’ Green Beret unit.

Jarhead. The Gulf War lasted less than a month. This 2005 disaster made it feel like an
eternity. Jamie Foxx plays his worst role ever as a sociopath sergeant who needs the Marine Corps to fulfill his cravings for a life away from normalcy. The acting portrays Marines as mental patients instead of focusing on the fact that many of them are simply doing their jobs as a service to our country. This movie also has the most disappointing action scene ever, as a heavily hyped carpet bombing campaign results in an ill-fated shot that looks like a group of kids setting off bottle rockets at the park.

Pearl Harbor. Leave it to Ben Affleck to make Pearl Harbor a romance. Despite an all-star cast, this horrific 2001 re-imagining of the much better Tora! Tora! Tora! is historically inaccurate, from the timing of the attacks to the military fighter planes and battle ships that were featured. Fortunately for this failed crapstorm, Tom Green’s Freddie Got Fingered prevented it from getting a Raspberry Award for Worst Film of the Year.

Rambo: First Blood Part II. While John Rambo had a right to be enraged after the Vietnamese killed his lover, freedom fighter Co Bao, I had a hard time believing that Sylvester Stallone can destroy every enemy in sight, free American POWs and finagle his way to the crooked Marshall Murdock in less than an hour. Furthermore, the Vietnamese must have the worst aim in the world, because Rambo seems to dodge thousands of shots in this 1988 movie. I guess running the steps of the Art Museum is good training for making human beings faster than bullets.

giganta2@lasalle.edu