orc4hire
Posts: 149
Joined: 7/31/2000 Status: offline
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Within the first few minutes of "12 O'Clock High" I understood why my wife's class wanted them to watch it. Interesting that the Navy used it... I see an Army Major has made a study of it as well. (http://www-cgsc.army.mil/milrev/English/janfeb98/bognar.htm)
WB, I think you in particular may shake your head over this.... My wife is going back to school to finish her degree; we're both in our 30's. Well, they showed "12 O'Clock High" in class, then broke up into groups to discuss it and write a paper on it. Most of the kids thought _there was something wrong with the movie._ They'd never seen one in black and white before. And those special effects, those actual planes and combat footage, that just looked so fake.... and that general was so mean, yelling at those poor boys. (The AFROTC kid disagreed with that last assesement, at least, thank god.)
Kids today....
SPR had it's moments, certainly, and the battle at Ramelle did too, but (and I admit I'm a very tough crowd; I get my movie reviews from www.mrcranky.com), but to me it was so flawed as to not do justice to the rest of the movie. Like fer' example, when Miller is explaining his battle plan, "We'll die all over them here, then die all over them there, then anybody who's left falls back to this side of the bridge and blows it up," my first thought was, "If I were that Sgt. I'd be saying, 'Hey Cap, how about we just go straight to plan B and blow the bridge first?'"
And at the very end, when Miller is popping off rounds with his .45 at the Tiger and his plan has obviously failed, my first thought was, "Oh god, don't tell me Speilberg is going to have the cavalry ride over the hill and some deux ex machina fighter bombers blow up the tank now." Ten seconds later, boom, zoom, there's the cavalry. Sigh.
Ramelle, I think, could have been done better, _should_ have been done better to live up to those first 15 minutes.
Then again I may just be weird. The most memorable character, to me, is the German sniper in the middle of the movie. The guys in the Ranger squad, the nominally important characters, are all a blur to me, but that poor bastard's face, scared, exhausted, alone, but sticking to his post, that's the one I remember.
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