Movie Review: The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954)

Where do we get such men? - Rear Adm. George Tarrant (Fredric March)

Director: Mark Robson

Writers: Valentine Davies, James Michener (novel)

Producer: William Perlberg, George Seaton

Studio: Paramount Pictures

Major Stars: William Holden, Grace Kelly, Fredric March, Mickey Rooney

Note: There are SPOILERS in this review. 53 years is long enough to have seen it already. But in case you haven’t, you may want to skip this until you do.

The Bridges at Toko-Ri is often held up as an example of either a pro-military movie or an anti-war movie. I’ve seen more than one argument about this. What these people don’t understand is that Toko-Ri is both. The skill and emotion with which it advances both these viewpoints is why Toko-Ri is on this list.

William Holden plays Lt. Harry Brubaker. A lawyer from Denver with a wife and kids, he’s a WW2 vet dragged back into service flying Navy fighters during the Korean War. After he crashes in the ocean and nearly dies, he’s questions the fairness of being pulled away from all he holds dear to fight in this war. But in the end he does his duty, flying a near-suicidal mission to take out the bridges at Toko-Ri. And it ends up being his final mission.

Fredric March plays Rear Admiral George Tarrant, Brubaker’s commanding officer. Grace Kelly plays Brubaker’s wife, Nancy. And Mickey Rooney plays Mike Forney, Brubaker’s friend who has the unenviable job of flying the rescue helicopter. All these roles were played beautifully. March conveys the steel a commanding officer must have when ordering men to their likely deaths, and the pain they feel in doing it. Kelly is heartbreaking, wanting to hold Harry back from the dangers of war. And Rooney is equal parts grave and comical, which must be the mindset a rescue pilot carries to stay sane when every rescue attempt could be your last.

But the film is about Brubaker, and Holden knocks it out of the park. After his first crash into the ocean, he is so livid that he has to go through this again. He did his part in World War 2. He has a wife and kids. Why does he have to risk his life again instead of some other guy? Hasn’t he done enough?

But in the end, he shoulders the responsibility. Because not everyone can or will do what Brubaker does; put their life in jeopardy for their country. That warrior ethos was one of the reasons the US Navy contributed so heavily to the making of this film. The scenes on the aircraft carriers were shot on real aircraft carries. Those are real, active-duty F9F-2 Panthers that you see in the film. No other film has had this level of cooperation, which is why Toko-Ri won the Best Special Effects Oscar in 1956.

Realistic Demand:
William Holden agreed to play the role of Lt. Brubaker on the condition they kept the ending of the book, where Brubaker died, instead of a “happy” ending.

So in that aspect, this is a very “pro-military” movie. But the film ends with our hero alone and dead in a muddy North Korean ditch. And you cannot help but take away an anti-war message from that.

Brubaker is asked to fly a mission of questionable value because it might turn the tide of the war. When he is shot down, he tries to hold on for a rescue. As the North Koreans swarm in, Marine Skyraiders pound them from the sky while Forney flies in the rescue chopper. But then its shot full of holes, so Forney and his assistant are stuck with Brubaker. The Skyraiders have to return to base. And the three men are left to die.

“Where do we get such men?” the admiral asks. Where do we get such men who are willing to sacrifice all they have in service to their country? And how much more tragic is it when they are lost to us in war, never to come home again?

There is a scene before Brubaker goes back to war where he gets some R&R with his family in Tokyo. The love they all have for each other is so obvious that you can’t help to flash to that at the end of the film and mourn that loss. It makes an already painful death even more so. Because we are reminded that there are casualties of war back home that we don’t see.

The Bridges at Toko-Ri balances respect for the soldiers and scorn for the wastefulness of war in a way few films do. It shows that one can recognize war for the awful waste of life that it is and still honor the men (and women) who sacrifice everything they have to fight in it. It’s a remarkable film, and I urge you to see it.

My Five Favorite Films From...1975

Honorable Mention – Death Race 2000: Look, I'm not going to pretend that this is a good film. It's solid B-movie fare. But it's fun B-movie fare. Death Race 2000 is just a gas to watch, whether it's because of Sly Stallone's overacting as "Machine Gun" Joe Viterbo or the classic scene where Frankenstein runs over the medical staff instead of the elderly patients they put out for him to run over. And it is leaps and bounds better than the remake.

5. The Eiger Sanction: A good, not great, film from Clint Eastwood. But what makes it one of my favorites from this year are the incredible rock-climbing scenes at the end. Eastwood did his own stunts, something you would never see nowadays.

4. Jaws: The film that created the concept of the "blockbuster" film. Scared the hell out of me when I first saw it. I still have issues swimming in the ocean today. Great acting all-around, but Robert Shaw as Quint just steals the movie.

3. The Return of the Pink Panther: This film always kills me. The part where Cato comes flying out of the refrigerator to attack Clouseau is just priceless.

2. Monty Python and the Holy Grail: If you're any kind of geek, as I am, then you know this film forwards and backwards. You know all the lines and all the gags. And it's still freaking hilarious even though I've seen it too many times to count.

1. Rollerball: I love this movie. I love the idea of one man standing up to the Corporation and not only surviving, but winning. And it's a damn fine look at how little corporations care about the common man, and how bloodthirsty we're becoming as a society. The action scenes are fantastic and James Caan is the perfect actor for the role of Jonathan E. For God's sake, don't taint your enjoyment of this film by watching that disastrous remake from 2002.

Films I Like But Didn't Make The List: The Yakuza, French Connection II, The Man Who Would Be King, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Deep Red, Farewell, My Lovely, The Passenger, The Man in the Glass Booth, Rooster Cogburn, The Wind and the Lion, Three Days of the Condor

Insane, Depraved Film I Have To Mention – Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom: Where to begin. This film is chock full of sex and nudity, but if you even get slightly aroused you should have yourself committed. Pier Paolo Pasolini's adaptation of de Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom is so completely abhorrent and insane that I can't even begin to describe it. The only goal Pasolini could've had with this movie was to completely de-eroticize the act of sex. Well, mission accomplished, sir. If you want to put kids off of sex, forget abstinence classes. Just have them watch this movie. It's exploitation masquerading as art, repeated to the point where it becomes mind-numbingly dull.

Note: I feel like I have to mention again that my list is not what I consider "the best" films of a particular year. If that was the case, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest would be at the top of the list. But while I like it, I simply didn't enjoy it as much as the ones on the list. That's the standard here.

Movie Review: Hobo with a Shotgun (2011)

Ahh...Hobo with a Shotgun. The film born from a trailer competition at SWSX. If you are not a fan of gruesome killings, buckets of blood, kids being torched on a bus and Rutger Hauer, then this is definitely not a film for you. I suggest watching The Notebook.

If, however, you do like all that stuff wrapped up in an homage to 80s splatter films, then you have found a film you will like.

Hauer is the Hobo mentioned in the title. Much like in the competition trailer, he comes to a city to try a buy a lawnmower because...well, that isn't really important. The city, once called Hope Town, is a pit of death and despair run by a psychopath called The Drake and his two sons.

And I do mean psychopath. With the police under his thumb, the Drake and his boys take people off the street and beat them to death. They tear people's heads off as warnings to the populace. They allow drug dealers and pimps to work freely. As a dystopian backdrop, director Jason Eisener has created probably the worst one (which is good) in recent memory. It makes Jasper, Missouri look like a beacon of law and order*.

So, the hobo sees all this decay and crime. He stops a prostitute from being killed by one of the Drake's boys and pays a heavy price. He finally raises the money for the lawnmower he sees in a pawn shop and just as he is about to buy it, thugs come in and try to rob the place. By threatening to kill a baby. Instead of the lawnmower, the Hobo takes down a shotgun. Mayhem, of course, ensues. Bloody, vicious mayhem.

I won't go into what happens further on. It's all pretty boilerplate as far as these films go. But there is one creative twist, and that is The Plague.

The Plague are an other-worldly duo - demonic bounty-hunters - who will capture anyone for the right price. They are pretty great as an idea and are executed well on the screen. It adds a little something to the film that separates it from others of its kind.

What I also like about the film is how very...80s the film is. From it's general look to the character types to the clothes and even the film quality, it screams mid-80s.

And it goes without saying that Hauer is awesome. He really does look like a hobo. To think he has a career that has spanned over 40 years, from films like Soldier of Orange and Blade Runner to Blind Fury and Hobo...talk about range.

Hobo with a Shotgun isn't "good" in the sense that it is a film you'll revisit over and over again. But as a homage to the "blood and guts" films of the 80s, it's right on target. Had it been released in 1983, it would have made the "video nasty" list in the UK without any problems. And I mean that as praise.

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*Roadhouse! You all knew that, right?**

** Something that has always bothered me about these cities, be it Hope Town or Jasper...where are the state authorities? Or the feds? If one town or city was having a guy splattering bums' heads with a bumper car or running over cars with a monster truck, don't you think the state police or someone else would eventually notice? I'm pretty sure burning a bus full of kids to death breaks at least one federal law.

The History of the RPG: Telengard (1982)

Last Installment: Ultima

If Wizardry and Ultima were the two progenitors of the computer RPG, it was Telengard that solidified it as an enduring genre on the PC. For even though it didn't have first-person views, or a world map, or even an end, it was so much fun that you'd play it for hours.

Telengard was simplicity itself. A D&D style game, you randomly generate stats for your character, but that's it. No race, no class*. There are inns where you can store your booty, rest and game save, but are accessible only on level one. Each piece of gold you find and store translates into experience points when you rest. You venture in to the dungeon to slay monsters and collect rewards using your sword and your spells. Sounds simple, right?

Not so fast. First, there is the size of Telengard The dungeon is 2,000,000 rooms in size and fifty levels deep, a number that would be impressive even today. Daniel Lawrence (the creator) achieved this by having Telengard generate the rooms through an algorithm that maximized the 8KB of memory he had available. So the dungeon was, for all intent and purposes, endless. Second, the game was real-time. There was no pause feature**. The only way you could stop it was to reach an inn and save your game. Third, the randomness of Telengard was legendary. You could enter into lower levels before your character was ready by falling in a pit. You could drink from a fountain and lose a level of experience. You never knew what was coming around the corner.

And then there was the big one: there was no "winning" the game. At all. And that was done on purpose. Telengard wasn't about the end but the means. It was a pure gaming platform. It was about gaining experience and killing monsters. The only "winning" to be done was through goals you and your friends set for yourselves. Who could live the longest or go the deepest. Who could gain the most experience or have the highest "+" magic item. Telengard was addictive in a way that Wizardry and Ultima were not. Because in Telengard, there was no limit and no end.

House of Munch Bonus Fact

I have a version of Telengard on my computer today. Plays just like the original. It's still addictive fun at its finest.

Influence

Refined the "dungeon crawl" of Wizardry into it's purest form. Massive dungeons. The unfortunate concept of "real-time" gaming combined with no pausing.

Descendants: Diablo, obviously. It's a straight line. All the way to using teleport spells to return to the top.***

Next on the list: The Bard's Tale

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* Well, you were a combo of wizard and warrior. But you didn't get to choose it. That is simply how it was.

** This is something that Diablo III ran with because of an internet connection being required for even a single-player game. Oh, you can hit "escape" in a single-player game and it "pauses"...until it boots you for being away too long.****

*** They may claim it was Moria that influenced them. But you can't look at that and not see Telengard in its genetics.

**** Which is fucking stupid. I mean, c'mon. What idiot at Blizzard thought that was a good idea? Yeah yeah yeah...they don't want people gaming and cheating PvP. I get that. So allow people to create single-player only characters. Problem solved.

Most Disappointing Game of 2012: Diablo III

I remember when the first Diablo came out. I played that game into the ground. I had it installed on my work laptop against company regulations because I didn't want to stop playing just because I had to go to work or lay in my bed. The only thing that could get me to stop playing was the one thing you don't talk about in polite company. I may have been crazy for Diablo, but I wasn't that crazy. Point is, I loved that game.

I really dug Diablo II as well. More levels, more monsters, same great gameplay. So it is understandable why there was such a frenzy for Diablo III.

But when D III came out I was strangely...apathetic after playing it. I played through the game once and I haven't gone back to it since. I haven't touched it in over six months.

I have pondered this from time to time. There are other games I have that were less hyped (X-Com, Crusader Kings II) that I have played regularly since I bought them. I see the shortcut for Diablo III on there and yet I never seem to click it.

The game wasn't buggy - I don't remember it ever crashing or giving me problems. Diablo III was certainly gorgeous visually. It had all the same wonderful loot grabbing that the first two games had. And the auction house, despite a lot of problems initially, is a really good idea.

So here is this game, like two other games I adored, on my computer, and I never go back to revisit it.

Maybe it is because the game seems somewhat...sterile. Or empty. It's like dating a beautiful woman/handsome man who is good at everything he/she does and does everything you like, but you can't connect with on any level. You can appreciate them and what they do, but you can easily leave them where they are and continue on.

Any great game draws you in again and again. It has a soul and heart. All the pretty graphics and gameplay in the world cannot cover up a lack of heart. And that is what Diablo III is missing.

Diablo III is an exercise in designing something technically sound and visually gorgeous. But it is not a product (in my opinion) born of love. It's a revenue generator for Blizzard and I personally feel that is reflected in the end product.

I like the auction house idea, but that is a clear cash-grab for Blizzard and the fee structure reflects that. The DRM-issue ties into that, forcing a player to be online to play and therefore to have access to the Auction House.

And there are issues with how the "end-game" is designed. To the point that some people are having to spend money in the AH to fix equipment that breaks on Inferno while being unable to obtain the legendary weapons they need.