War stories

Ironically, though, a movie considered strongly antiwar by one viewer may strike another as an exciting depiction of military might.

Samuel Fuller, a decorated World War II soldier who later directed blistering movies like "The Steel Helmet" and "Fixed Bayonets," once remarked that "Full Metal Jacket" was just another "recruiting film," since he suspected its mainly male audience would find perverse pleasure in its portrait of young soldiers being hardened for the battlefield.

Movies are ultimately fantasies, of course, not direct reflections of the world we actually live in. But since they help to shape our attitudes toward life, war films surely influence our thoughts about aggression, violence, hatred, and other elements of wartime experience.

This has led some critics to call for less mayhem in war movies - and in movies of all kinds - on the theory that violence always begets more violence.

An opposing view has also emerged, however, arguing that a long heritage of "tasteful" and "tactful" war movies - omitting graphic gore to suit censorship and rating codes - has sanitized the public's conception of war, creating a subliminal impression that battlefield violence is outweighed by opportunities for valor, self-sacrifice, and the chance to defeat a wicked enemy.

Some see TV coverage of the Persian Gulf conflict in 1990 as a logical continuation of this tendency, using high-tech video devices to depict bombing, shooting, and killing in images so detached and bloodless that viewers had trouble grasping the real-life mutilation, suffering, and death that were actually going on.

Be this as it may, war movies continue to attract studio money and public attention in the wake of "Saving Private Ryan" and the World War II nostalgia it tapped into. Nicolas Cage is particularly busy in this area, due later this month in "Captain Corelli's Mandolin," a wartime romance by "Shakespeare in Love" director John Madden, and in November, "Windtalkers," a John Woo movie about "code talkers" who conveyed secret messages.

Mel Gibson, fresh from the Revolutionary War heroics of "The Patriot," is reportedly being pursued by both Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures to portray an American warship commander involved in a historic naval disaster. Gibson will also star in "When We Were Soldiers" (scheduled for December), a movie about the first year of the Vietnam War. It also stars Greg Kinnear, Madeline Stowe, Sam Elliott, and Chris Klein.

Although out-and-out war movies make up a small proportion of contemporary films, the genre is flourishing when you count pictures that capitalize on war in roundabout ways.

"Cats & Dogs" is a farce with little connection to everyday life, but the focus of its comedy - felines and canines fighting tooth and nail - takes important cues from the high-tech fantasy of James Bond epics and the Austin Powers pictures. One of this winter's mostly eagerly awaited releases is "Lord of the Rings," based on J.R.R. Tolkien's brilliant books about warfare and other adventures in a mythological Middle Earth realm.

Fans may not pigeonhole these as war films, but part of their appeal comes from their place in a long tradition of war-centered fiction stretching back at least as far as Homer, whose "Iliad" and "Odyssey" have been cited as sources for "Apocalypse Now" and other combat films.

War movies may pick up even more momentum if pictures like "Windtalkers" and "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" catch on. But this will merely continue a trend far older than the Hollywood that profits from it.

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