Above Us The Waves (1955) + The
Malta Story (1953) + Sea Of Sand
(1958) + The Way To The Stars (1945)
+ We Dive At Dawn (1943/VCI British
War DVDs) + Platoon (1986/MGM
Blu-ray + DVD) + Tigerland (2000/Fox
Blu-ray)
Picture: C/C+/C/C/C/B-
& C/B- Sound: C (VCI DVDs)/B- & C+/B- Extras: D/C+/B- Films: C+ (Tigerland: B-)
With
Memorial Day 2011 upon us, the studios are issuing films that fit the theme,
including some British films you have likely not seen. There has to be more U.S. War genre films in
the vaults somewhere, but we begin with the five from VCI, ITV and the Rank
Studios catalog.
Ralph
Thomas directed his share of actioners on the big and small screen. For Above
Us The Waves (1955), he has Sir John Mills, John Gregson, Donald Sinden and
Theodore Bikel in this WWII submarine thriller with Ernest Stewart no less as
Director of Photography. The Brits use a
never-before-used mini-sub to get rid of German U-Boats and more in a
serviceable thriller that hold sup pretty good, has some good acting and a few
good action sequences to boot. It is not
bad.
Brian
Desmond Hurst’s The Malta Story
(1953) is another WWII tale with Alex Guinness as a pilot photographer who crash-lands
in the title locale and in the middle of a key strategic point for the Allied
vs. Axis sides as he discovers an Axis plan to take it all over. Uneven at times, additional performances by
Jack Hawkins, Anthony Steel, Flora Robinson and Nigel Stock among others stops
this from being more dated than it might otherwise be. Robert Krasker is Director of Photography,
which is a plus.
Guy
Green’s Sea Of Sand (1958) has Robert S. Baker and
Monty Berman co-producing just a few years before they hit it big on TV with
the likes of The Saint, Department S, Jason King and many other hits in another WWII Location actioner,
this time set in the desert. Michael
Craig, John Gregson, Richard Attenborough and Barry Foster are among the solid
cast in this pre-Lawrence Of Arabia flick with more effective action sequences
than you might expect. The great Wilkie
Cooper serves as Director of Photography.
John
Mills is joined by Michael Redgrave, Rosamund John, Stanley Holloway and others
in Anthony Asquith’s The Way To The
Stars (1945), a WWII Royal Air Force drama also released as Johnny
In The Clouds. The combination
of some good acting, good script moments and old-fashioned aerial fights (even
including stock footage and rear projection) make this also worth a look.
The last
British WWII film we have is also from Asquith.
We Dive At Dawn (1943) is
another submarine thriller and John Mills is here again, but this one does not
always age as badly and you’ll love the then-new and impressive diving
gear. Besides some chuckles, this is a
well-acted thriller also starring Niall McGinnis and Eric Portman holds up
pretty well and is as good as any of the five VCI issued this time around.
Moving on
to the Vietnam
fiasco, we look at two films that see the conflict in compatible ways, but one
holds up better than the other.
Oliver
Stone’s Platoon (1986, hitting
Blu-ray on its 25th Anniversary) was a big hit and award-winner in
its time, cementing Stone’s reputation for being a filmmaker with substance and
a force to be reckoned with. However, it
was never my favorite film of his, was not up to the best films on the subject
(Deer Hunter, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse
Now) and has not aged very well in an era of shaky camera work and bad
editing, despite how well made it was for its time.
Despite a
solid cast that includes Willem Dafoe, then-sane Charlie Sheen,
then-uncompromising Johnny Depp, John C. McGinley, Forest Whittaker, Kevin
Dillon, Keith David and Tom Berenger, the film had some problems to begin
with. In trying to be the experience, it
backfires because its chaos is not distinctive enough to that experience. The use of hit music is not always as
effective as it could be and the portrayal of African Americans is on the weak
side. However, it still has some good moments,
does not portray what happened as a winnable war (which is a myth) and is still
better than many of the other dramatic films on the subject, including many
imitators.
On the
other hand, Joel Schumacher’s Tigerland
(2000) may not have been as seen, but was always an underrated late entry into
the Vietnam cycle, established then-unknown Colin Farrell as an acting force to
be aware of, almost did the same for Clifton Collins Jr., is rougher in showing
the experience than most films of its kind and is maybe the most underrated
(more than Hamburger Hill) film in
the cycle. Farrell is a soldier who
cannot confirm and seems to know that something is amiss this time around for
the U.S. and their
involvement in ‘Nam,
even if he has not realized it.
The film
has a very smart script by Ross Klavan and Michael McGruther, well directed by
Schumacher in what may be his most underrated work (give or take Veronica Guerin, though Falling Down found a belated audience
and not enough of them) and if any post-Deer Hunter Vietnam film deserves
rediscovery the most, this is it. Look
for Michael Shannon and Cole Hauser too.
The 1.33
X 1 image on the VCI black and white DVDs and anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 Platoon DVD (with its awful edge
enhancement) are on the weak, dated side with detail and depth issues, plus
some print damage here and there, though Malta
looks a little better throughout. That
is more acceptable on the older films than Platoon, so you would think the new
AVC @ 28 MBPS Blu-ray would be better.
To some extent it is, but not as much as an important film like it
should be.
The 1080p
1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image on both Blu-rays have their share of
grain and noise, but Tigerland
(lensed by Matthew Libatique) was shot in 16mm and in its AVC @ 31 MBPS
transfer is very close to the 35mm blow-up print I saw many years ago. Platoon
was shot in 35mm and should look better than this.
The Dolby
Digital 2.0 Mono on the VCI DVDs definitely show their age, though I wish these
had PCM tracks, as that might bring out more of the original sound. The Dolby Digital 5.1 track on the DVD of Platoon is weak and very lossy, not up
to the sound design. The DTS-HD MA
(Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on the Platoon
Blu-ray fares better, but not up to what the original sound would be from
first-generation sources sounding weak and choppy at times. A Dolby 4.0/A-type analog theatrical release,
this needs revisited by Stone for a future edition. That leaves the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1
lossless mix on Tigerland very much
in the center channel, but that is by design and this is warmer and cleaner,
with the other speaker sometimes engaged in interesting ways.
The DVDs
have no extras, but Platoon offers
two feature length audio commentary tracks, three vintage featurettes, a dated
DVD version, trailers, TV spots and Deleted & Extended Scenes with optional
commentary by Stone, while Tigerland
has a great feature length audio commentary by Schumacher, trailer, 2 TV spots
and four vintage featurettes.
- Nicholas Sheffo
