 Civil
War - DVD |
| Civil
War - VHS |
| Great
Battles - DVD |
| Great
Battles - VHS |
| War
Drama - DVD |
| War
Drama - VHS |
| War
Bestsellers - DVD |
| War
Bestsellers - VHS |
|
Tears
of the Sun
(2003)
DVD
While it offers nothing new to
the military action genre, Tears of the Sun distinguishes itself with fine
acting, expert craftsmanship, and seriousness of purpose. Its familiar
"extraction mission" plot is essentially similar to that of Black Hawk
Down, involving a crack team of U.S. Special Ops commandos struggling to
rescue innocent missionaries amidst the bloody horror of Nigerian ethnic
cleansing. With Bruce Willis as their grizzled, no-nonsense commander,
the skillful team enters a hot zone that gets even hotter when their "package"--an
American national (Monica Bellucci) who runs the isolated mission--demands
that 70 Nigerian villagers be included in the rescue. Willis's uneasy conscience
leads him to defy orders and expand his mission, and in an ambitious follow
up to Training Day, director Antoine Fuqua escalates tension and strike-force
with considerable emotional impact. Originally considered as a potential
entry in Willis's Die Hard series, and released on the eve of America's
war with Iraq, Tears of the Sun admirably avoids jingoism with its rousing
story of personal good vs. political evil. --Jeff Shannon |
Behind
Enemy Lines (2001)
An
above-average
military
thriller
Perfectly timed to bolster patriotism,
the film is partly set (during a hypothetical "day after tomorrow") on
the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Carl Vinson, which was on alert status in the
Persian Gulf when this film was released.
Owen Wilson plays a navy navigator
who is shot down over Bosnia during a reconnaissance mission. Pursued by
rebel Serbian forces, Wilson must fight for survival while his commanding
officer (Gene Hackman) plots a daredevil rescue. |
Saving
Private Ryan
(1999)
DVD
Steven Spielberg continues to make
movie magic with the breathtaking war drama "Saving Private Ryan". Tom
Hanks plays Captain Miller, a soldier's soldier, who takes a small band
of troops behind enemy lines to retrieve a private whose three brothers
have recently been killed in action. "Saving Private Ryan" is an astonishing,
edge-of-your-seat war spectacle of courage and triumph over incredible
odds. |
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The
Pianist (Widescreen Edition) (2003) DVD
Winner of the prestigious Golden
Palm award at the 2002 Cannes film festival, The Pianist is the film that
Roman Polanski was born to direct. A childhood survivor of Nazi occupied
Poland, Polanski was uniquely suited to tell the story of Wladyslaw Szpilman,
a Polish Jew and concert pianist (played by Adrien Brody) who witnessed
the Nazi invasion of Warsaw, miraculously eluded the Nazi death camps,
and survived throughout World War II by hiding among the ruins of the Warsaw
ghetto. Unlike any previous dramatization of the Nazi holocaust, The Pianist
steadfastly maintains its protagonist's singular point of view, allowing
Polanski to create an intimate odyssey on an epic wartime scale, drawing
a direct parallel between Szpilman's tenacious, primitive existence and
the wholesale destruction of the city he refuses to abandon. Uncompromising
in its physical and emotional authenticity, The Pianist strikes an ultimate
note of hope and soulful purity. As with Schindler's
List, it's one of the greatest films ever made about humanity's
darkest chapter.
--Jeff Shannon
|
The
World At War -
Complete
Set DVD
Unbelievable visual guide
to the greatest event
in
the 20th century
Sir Jeremy Isaacs highly deserves
the numerous awards for documentaries he has earned: the Royal Television
Society's Desmond Davis Award, l'Ordre National du Mérit, an Emmy,
and a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II. His epic The World at War remains
unsurpassed as the definitive visual history of World War II.
The Second World War was different
from other wars in thousands of ways, one of which was the unparalleled
scope of visual documents kept by the Axis and Allies of all their activities.
As a result, this war is understood as much through written histories as
it is through its powerful images. The Nazis were particularly thorough
in documenting even the most abhorrent of the atrocities they were committing--in
a surprising amount of color footage. The World at War was one of the first
television documentaries that exploited these resources so completely,
giving viewers an unbelievable visual guide to the greatest event in the
20th century. This is to say nothing of the excellent, comprehensible narrative.
--Erik J. Macki |
CNN
Presents - War in Iraq - The Road to Baghdad
(2003)
DVD
|
|
The
Last Days of the
Civil
War DVD
Packed with nearly six
hours of historical material, The Last Days of the Civil War provides a
fascinating study of a nation in the painful throes of transition. The
five History Channel programs compiled here effectively combine to form
a multifaceted account of the pivotal events of 1864-65, when the bloodshed
of civil war slowly brought forth a government (in the words of President
Abraham Lincoln) "of the people by the people for the people," that would
define the United States as it progressed toward the 20th century. The
cornerstone of this two-disc set is "April 1865: The Month That Changed
America," which thoroughly examines the most tumultuous month in U.S. history,
encompassing Gen. Robert E. Lee's ill-fated campaigns including carnage
at Sailor's Creek and eventual retreat from Richmond, Virginia, and Confederate
surrender to Gen. U.S. Grant at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. Add the brutal
efficiency of Sherman's March, Booth's plot to assassinate Lincoln, and
administrative mistakes that put Lee at a strategic disadvantage, and you
begin to see (with input from authoritative scholars, authors, and historians)
how Union victory was purely a matter of circumstance.
--Jeff
Shannon
|
Black
Hawk Down
(3-Disc
Deluxe Edition) (2001) DVD
Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down
conveys the raw, chaotic urgency of ground-force battle in a worst-case
scenario. With exacting detail, the film re-creates the American siege
of the Somalian city of Mogadishu in October 1993, when a 45-minute mission
turned into a 16-hour ordeal of bloody urban warfare.
--Jeff Shannon
|
Pearl
Harbor (2001)
To call Pearl Harbor
a throwback to old-time
war movies is something
of an understatement.
Director Michael Bay's epic take
on the bombing that brought the United States into World War II hijacks
every war movie situation and cliché (some affectionate some stale)
you've ever seen and gives them a shiny, glossy spin until the whole movie
practically gleams.
Planes glisten, water sparkles
trees beckon and Bay's re-creation of the bombing itself, a 30-minute sequence
that's tightly choreographed and amazingly photographed sets the action
movie bar up quite a few notches. |
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