Mr. Klavan cannot be congratulated enough on his fine exposition on the transformation of Hollywood's view of war and the men who fight it. My own sensibilities about who and why men fight wars were formed by the war movies of the forties and fifties. There was more complexity in the stories than what appeared on the surface to be trite homilies, but never about the moral standards of American democracy being the legitimate rationale for sacrifice against tyrannical regimes and murderous dictators.

So my views formed early and were reinforced powerfully when the men in my family returned from World War II with their stories and regaled us kids with tales of simple heroism. Members of my family were decorated with Silver Stars and Bronze Stars, and a cousin of my mom's, a combat physician, came within a hair's breath of winning a Congressional Medal of Honor, but for a beauracratic snag. He'd set up a makeshift field hospital during the Battle of the Bulge and while he was operating saving the lives of his fellow GI's, he manned a machine gun and kept two German patrols at bay until relief arrived.

My own turn for military service came duing the Cold War; I joined the U.S. Army Reserves after finishing college.
The commanding officer of my unit was a World War Two veteran. One evening after a unit session, we repaired to a local watering hole to hoist a few. The conversation came around to war movies. We laughed at how the WW II films always made sure to cast archetypal dogfaces. There was always "the kid" from a farming town, a Jewish/Italian type named "Brooklyn" (naturally), a southern boy, an earnest midwesterner, a peacetime lawyer from small town New England as a CO.

But as earnestly corny as it was, it did say something profound about what movie producers of that era felt about their country. It was about inclusion. It was everyone's fight, against an enemy of America--not against America itself.

Thank you for an excellent article. I went to see the new Rambo yesterday, and despite its other failings, it is an unveiled attack on Hollywood's leftist ideology as well. Rambo fights evil "without a human face" as you say, and while it is extremely violent, it actually comes off as a film both in favor of and against the American warrior ethos. As you say, war is dreadful, but it is not futile, and we should not degrade the sacrifices of our soldiers overseas by making movies that imply that war is always wrong and futile.

Andrew Klavan misses the primary failure of "Saving Private Ryan": it is a film that deliberately has all of the fighting and none of the reason. Anybody who walks into that film knowing nothing about World War II comes out thinking "nice of those guys to be loyal to each other," but if none of them was there in the first place, there would have been no reason to 'save' Private Ryan and in the process kill off most of the characters.

Contrast that with the same director's "Schindler's List," which had all of the reason and none of the fighting. At the end of the film, a Russian officer on horseback appears at the gate of the camp telling everyone that they could go home, a veritable officer-ex-machina.

The director could have interleaved the two themes and successfully given the viewer the fighting and the reason. In France, scenes from the "Das Reich" massacres at Oradour sur Glane and/or Tulle interleaved with the Normandy landings and breakout would have been both exciting and informative. But the director and his milieu were unwilling to allow the viewer to have that "ah-hah, now I understand" moment.

My pick is the HBO series "Band of Brothers," which adhered religiously to fact and Stephen Ambrose's book of the same name. There is horrifically realistic fighting and the reason in Episode Nine, "Why We Fight." Clearly, it can be done, there just has to be the will to do it.

"That argument would make sense in an atmosphere of contending visions that showed both America’s greatness and its imperfections." What exactly, in Klavan's view, would such a film look like? It seems that Klavan's rejection of the notion of ambivalence would prevent him from perceiving the even-handedness of such a film even if one were made. I think that, in fact, many of the films cited by Klavan are ambivalent with respect to nationalism/patriotism. For example, the Ralph Fiennes character is not the "main" character of the "English Patient," despite the film's title. His story parallels that of characters who are decidedly nationalist in outlook, if one watches the film honestly rather than relying on Seinfeld characters for critical insight. In fact, the critical obstinacy and lack of ambivalence in Klavan's piece renders it as empty and nihilistic as any of the arguably anti-American films he is criticizing.

And can we please recognize, for once and for all, that John Wayne was terrible? He even ruins "Fort Apache," with a great performance by Henry Fonda (as the villain for one of the few times in his career). It is the very lack of ambivalence in John Wayne as actor (even when he furrowed his brow and tried to conjure some up) that reveals the flaw in the argument here. Unless our ideals are challenged, they cannot be affirmed. All else is pitiful propaganda.

As an avid reader of your books, and also a fan of patriotic American war films, I find little to disagree with in your dissection of current movies. But I did think "In the Valley of Elah" was an even-handed movie in that it laid bare the bad things that war can do to some individuals, while at the same time not disrespecting the classic military virtues.

Two words:

Thank you.

This essay essentially ties up most of my (admittedly jingoistic) thoughts about Hollywood and the lack of portraying "American Heroes" and "American Values."

You have a new fan!

Wow. What a great article. I might have to pick up some of Mr. Klavan's books, if the writing is as good as this article.

Mr. Klavan is right for the most part. I have no bones to pick with his argument, but I think "We Were Soldiers" is proof positive that there is hope for Hollywood regarding military depictions.

Mel Gibson's portrayal of Lt. Col. Hal Moore leading the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry at the 1965 battle of Ia Drang, in the central highlands of South Vietnam is spot on, due in no small part to Moore's consultation on the project. No doubt one of the ten bestwar movies ever made.

Your article is the best analysis of Hollywood's bad war movies (since the release of "The Bridge on the River Kwai") that I have ever read. I especially liked your highlighting Clint Eastwood's nonsense about the battle for Iwo Jima. Thank you.

One word: WOW!

An amazing and highly intellectual analysis. I've often pondered the subject of Hollywood's anti-Americanism myself.

This article has really opened my eyes.

Bravo!

Thank you for a very thorough, thought-provoking, and substantive article. I've seen most of the films you mention (including "They Were Expendable"), and your comparative analysis is right on target.

I've spent a lot of time in the military. I guess you can count me as one of those patriotic dupes. There are many many thousands of us.

As usual, Klavan is brilliant, insightful, and dead right. There are few like him in the creative arts.

I met Klavan last autumn at a writer's conference in Aurora, Illinois. "You're way ahead of a lot of writers," I told him, "because you know how the universe works."

Both Owen and Remarque were actually soldiers in WW I, which is why their work still today finds resonance among real soldiers. It is too easy to characterize it as simply "anti-nationalistic." Owen was a volunteer who decided to go back to his unit after treatment for shell shock.

Surely what Owen was saying was not that war is necessarily wrong, but that it is not glorious. It is nasty and messy. The people who promised a glorious war in Iraq have learned that lesson again. Wars can be worth fighting, but let's be honest about what we ask our troops to do and tell it like it is.