Title: Embarrassments all round.
Review: Where to begin with a film so full of verbal and visual clichés? Taken from Swofford's cynical memoirs, Mendes goes to town with the usual "grunts as foul mouthed dupes thrown into war by capitallists" routine. The language is gratuitous except to convey how Hollywood thinks recruits and PFCs behave. Drill sergeants have long been prevented from slapping recruits but here we go again with scenes showing the supposed brutality of the system.Mendes thought he had the raw material for a great war movie. He doesn't. And it looks like he gave up trying halfway, throwing around liberal and literal plagiarisms from Apocalypse Now, Three Kings, Full Metal Jacket, The Hill and Deer Hunter. It's pathetic.For the acting, Chris Cooper phones his performance in and Dennis Haysbert wanders in from another movie. Only Peter Sarsgaard emerges with any credit. An actor to watch for but not in this nonsense.
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