Movie Review: The Last Full Measure (2019)

A biographical drama retroactively examining battlefield heroics, The Last Full Measure is earnest but veers towards persistent reverence.

In 1999, Vietnam War veteran Tom Tulley (William Hurt) advocates for reopening the case of Air Force Pararescueman William H. Pitsenbarger (Jeremy Irvine) to determine if he posthumously deserves the Medal of Honor. Ambitious Pentagon staffer Scott Huffman (Sebastian Stan) is tasked with conducting the necessary research.

In April of 1966, a US Army platoon is caught in a Vietnam jungle ambush and suffers heavy casualties. Pitsenbarger rappels onto the battlefield from the safety of his helicopter to help evacuate the wounded. He saves many lives before succumbing to enemy fire, but is then awarded the Air Force Cross rather than the coveted Medal of Honor. 

Scott is initially uninterested in the entire file, but is soon drawn into the case as he tracks down survivors and hears the stories of the men involved in the fateful battle, including Billy Takoda (Samuel L. Jackson), Ray Mott (Ed Harris), and Jimmy Burr (Peter Fonda). Pitsenbarger's parents Frank and Alice (Christopher Plummer and Diane Ladd) support Scott's investigation, with Frank's ill health adding a sense of urgency.

Written and directed by Todd Robinson, The Last Full Measure is inspired by real events. The film sets out to salute the heroes of a war gone bad, and achieves this objective with ardent respect. The screenplay carries a nervous yearning for a final polish, but the production values are slick, and the tone is serious, inquisitive, and always searching for the positive instinct within the human spirit. 

As bureaucrat Scott delves into the case, frequent flashbacks from multiple perspectives recreate the ambush at the centre of Pitsenbarger's story. The combat scenes are suitably chaotic, the on-the-ground soldiers trapped by intense enemy fire and gripped by confusion and fear. Into this arena drops Pitsenbarger to help save the wounded, and The Last Full Measure never holds back on representing the medal winner as a mythical saviour. Soaring emotive music augments the square-jawed fearless warrior image, actor Jeremy Irvine encouraged to rise above the mayhem of mere mortals.

The surrounding modern day men-of-war stories enhance the drama. Scott's investigation reopens old wounds, rekindling memories of battlefield mistakes that still haunt surviving soldiers tortured by the belief they should have done better. Samuel L. Jackson, Ed Harris, and Peter Fonda embody veterans living with waking nightmares populated by death, gore, and disillusion. In an elegant gesture, John Savage appears as a sage and healing presence in the post-war Vietnam jungle, 41 years after his seminal ordeal in The Deer Hunter. 

Less effective is a bit of villainy in the form of Scott's boss Carlton Stanton (Bradley Whitford), who pulls on levers of careerism to protect his bosses as the investigation reveals military missteps.

Steering away from wit, cynicism, or broader questions about war, The Last Full Measure succeeds in saluting valour within sacrifice.



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Movie Review: 3:10 To Yuma (2007)

A western about two men at the opposite ends of the moral spectrum, 3:10 To Yuma finds the right balance between well-staged action and character-driven discourse.

After serving as a sharpshooter in the Civil War, Dan Evans (Christian Bale) is now a near-bankrupt cattle farmer with a lame leg. He is trying to live his life the right way and look after his wife Alice (Gretchen Mol) and two boys, including teenager William (Logan Lerman). While rounding up cattle one day, Dan stumbles upon charismatic outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) and his gang robbing a rail company payroll stagecoach.

The heist is violent but successful, with Pinkerton agent Byron McElroy (Peter Fonda) the only stagecoach survivor. Ben allows Dan and his sons to walk away. At the nearby small town of Bisbee, Ben dallies with a saloon girl and is arrested, while the rest of his gang, including ruthless second-in-command Charlie Prince (Ben Foster), get away. Dan joins a small team assembled by the Marshal to escort Ben to Contention, where he can be placed on the 3:10 train to Yuma to face justice. Along the way, Ben does all he can to escape, and to psychologically wear down Dan.

A remake of the classic 1957 western, the 2007 version of 3:10 To Yuma is a worthy retelling of the delicate story. Directed by James Mangold, the film does unnecessarily bloat by about 30 minutes to a two hour running time, stretching the narrative limits of what is essentially a two-person character tug-of-war. But otherwise Mangold delivers plenty of well-staged action to punctuate the slowly evolving tension between rancher and outlaw.

While the original had a small-scale and intimate feel, Mangold opens up the film with more outdoor incidents. This works to create additional openings for shoot-outs and attempted escapes, but also strains credibility with convoluted script machinations to reconnect Evans and Wade every time they are separated.

A western primarily exploring two competing attitudes towards carving a frontier livelihood is fully reliant on the central performances, and Mangold is ably assisted by Christian Bale and particularly Russell Crowe in fine form. Bale is steady and intense and finds Evans' trauma as a man who may never gain the respect of his sons. Escorting a dangerous prisoner is a final opportunity to leave a legacy, a dance with the devil filled with danger and temptations.

3:10 To Yuma finds Crowe close to his creative peak, and the actor creates in Ben Wade an irresistible leader, combining smarts with ferocity. Crowe unleashes oodles of confidence within Wade and a quiet contempt for authority and anyone who claims the world is a fair place. And yet Crowe allows subtle hints to seep out suggesting he envies Evans' attempt at a building a domestic life the outlaw will never get to experience.

The dialogue exchanges between the two men are exceptionally well written, teasing out the power stalemate between the meek man carrying the rifle against the prisoner with all the brashness.

The film ends with an admirable if wild climax, one rancher and one crime boss carving out new destinies under a hail of bullets. As westerns go 3:10 To Yuma makes it to the station on time, carrying some excess weight but plenty of flamboyance.

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Movie Review: Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry (1974)

A minimalist car chase movie, Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry has plenty of roaring engines and car stunts, but little in the way of soul.

In nondescript rural USA, Larry (Peter Fonda) and his friend Deke (Adam Roarke) rob a supermarket. Deke holds the manager's wife and child hostage while Larry casually walks in and demands the contents of the safe. They make their escape in Larry's overpowered Chevy Impala, but not before Larry's one-night-stand Mary (Susan George) insists on joining them.

Larry has dreams of joining the NASCAR racing circuit, and needs the money to secure better equipment so that he can compete. Deke is his ace mechanic. Mary is tough as nails and demands to go along for the ride, as the trio escape from a mounting police dragnet. Captain Franklin (Vic Morrow) coordinates the search through the sprawling back country, but Deke's police scanner along with Larry's driving skills and the Impala's pure power allow the escapees to stay one step ahead of their pursuers. Franklin finally takes to the skies in a helicopter, as the chase reaches its climax.

Directed by John Hough as an adaptation of the novel Pursuit by Richard Unekis, Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry is a typical piece of early 1970s open road counterculture filmmaking, in the vein of Easy Rider and The Sugarland Express. Dirty Mary has no shortage of horsepower, squealing tires, roaring cars, and the occasional cool stunt, as well as a rolling confrontation between likable bandits and state authority. Hough makes good use of the open and sunny landscape, setting the film in endless fields and backroads that could represent the indistinguishable flatlands of Anywhere America. The acres of greenery are only punctuated by the colourful cars roaring towards the promise of a better personal future for Larry, the ends justifying the means.

But there is a limit to how much enjoyment can be derived from hurtling metal down rural roads, and the film starts to suffer due to a lack of a warm heartbeat. Inside the car, there simply isn't enough to root for. Larry, Deke and Mary are limited characters without much to offer, and after establishing their basic identities, the film has little to work with. The running gag of Larry trying to get rid of Mary is quickly predictable (she always finds her way back into the car), and Captain Franklin does little except bark orders down the radio.

Larry is half-crazed, his NASCAR dream providing insufficient motivation to fuel the film's emotion. Deke is more cerebral but also more of a blank slate, while Mary is sharp tongued but just along for the ride, for mostly unexplained reasons The script (by Leigh Chapman and Antonio Santean) is unable to take advantage of the quiet interludes to build depth, and the main protagonists remain broad-brush anti-heroes, with little to say about themselves or the world they live in.

The film is left to lean heavily on motorized confrontations, and these are delivered with plenty of zest. Once the pursuit starts, Larry encounters police cars at regular intervals, and has to outdrive, outsmart or plain outmuscle his hunters, first in the Impala then a bright green Dodge Charger. The horsepower duels are undeniably fun, and Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry delivers on its basic premise: character development is blown out of the window, but its pedal to the metal time for vehicular carnage.

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Movie Review: Easy Rider (1969)

And this is how the 1960s ended.

Easy Rider is the punctuation mark at the end of a decade's worth of social upheaval and rejection of traditional norms. Living the life of freedom translates to riding the open highway on mammoth motorcycles, smoking weed, dealing drugs, smoking weed, visiting communes, smoking weed, landing in jail, smoking weed, being met with suspicion by every establishment man, smoking weed, exploring a whorehouse, smoking weed, and attracting lustful women by the mere fact of existing.

Dennis Hopper directed, Peter Fonda produced, and together with Terry Southern, they co-wrote the Easy Rider script. And as the laid back Captain America (Fonda) and the more highly strung Billy (Hopper), they gave life to two iconic characters. Their most memorable travelling companion is George Hanson (Jack Nicholson), a hard-drinking, philosophical son of influential parents, quick to abandon his life and join a trek to New Orleans.

Easy Rider is a buddy road movie, exploring the alternative life of checking-out and specifically the end-result of all the rule-breaking. The very thin thread of plot has Captain America and Billy making their way to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, stopping at various off-the-beaten-track locations and picking up an assortment of characters along the way. But the film is really about physically and emotionally breaking away from any expectations and responsibilities, with no shortage of open-highway, landscape-rolling-by shots, interrupted by discussions about what it means live by no rules and the consequences of spinning away and creating unique orbits.

Nicholson had been making movies since 1958, but in a star-making role he brings a just slightly unhinged intensity to the quest for freedom, viewing life through the thick lens at the bottom of the bottle and quickly cutting through all the nonsense. Fonda and Hopper allow Nicholson to have the final say on a convulsing nation's split attitude:

Hanson: Oh, yeah, that's right. That's what's it's all about, all right. But talkin' about it and bein' it, that's two different things. I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Of course, don't ever tell anybody that they're not free, 'cause then they're gonna get real busy killin' and maimin' to prove to you that they are. Oh, yeah, they're gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it's gonna scare 'em.

The other two stand-out stars are the two monstrous motorcycles, custom-built for the movie and either destroyed or stolen during filming. With roaring engines, Hopper and Fonda pessimistically present the quest for individuality as enjoying its moments but doomed to tragic failure, fabric woven over many years proving inhospitable to upstart freedom seekers. 

Easy Rider is a nontraditional adventure, and a prescient generational eulogy.

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