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Reviews
Redacted (2007)
Same "stuff"... different war
De Palma already did his murder/rape hatchet job in 1989, when Leftist darlings Sean Penn and Michael J. Fox offered their considerable acting attributes to "Casualties of War".
Some folks posting on this site are already accepting as truth the premise of De Palma's film. Whoa!
If American troops had actually committed this atrocity, the mainstream media would have trumpeted it, and would have never let us forget it. It would be bigger than Abu Gharib.
De Palma not only copies Hitchcock's cinematic style unabashedly; he's now reduced to recycling his own scripts and plots.
At least he had the decency to wait until Vietnam was some time in the past before he urinated over the legacy of those veterans.
I have checked Mr. De Palma's bio on this site, and there is no mention that he ever served in the armed forces. As much as I loathe Oliver Stone, he's a combat Marine, and deserving of a salute for his service.
De Palma needs to stick to gangster flicks. Otherwise, when it comes to the American fighting trooper, he, like the rest of Hollywierd, is clueless.
Sahara (1995)
Something to be watched and discussed with mature kids, so they'll know how it was done; an excellent DVD companion to the 1943 original.
I'll defer from the previous opinions that this was a shameless ripoff of Borgart's 1943 film. I see it as a labor of love, a tribute to the spirit that helped The Greatest Generation win the war. James Belushi could not hope to imitate Bogart, so I look to the blow-by-blow recreation of the script as the spark plug of the movie.
"Sahara" is a work of fiction, but that part of the war was a desperate action, fought by men under harsh and trying conditions. The desert war is overlooked by historians, and little mention is made of the struggle against nature as well as the implacable foe.
Like the films of Frank Capra, "Sahara" is optimistic and idealistic to the point of "corniness", but it works by capturing the simple-minded determination of men to fight for their comrades, and to hold their position in spite of the odds. The poetry at the end suggests the tribute: "...they shall not grow old...we shall not forget." With hindsight, we can find faults with the script and the tactical representation of the artificial situation, but not with the grit and determination of the real people who fought the actual war. This re-make of "Sahara" is an anachronism, but one to be respected.