latinese

Un problema che ha avuto questo film in Italia è stata l'accoglienza piuttosto negativa da parte della stampa. E certo: Spike Lee aveva osato toccare la vacca sacra, ovvero la Resistenza. Nel suo film ha ricostruito la strage di Sant'Anna di Stazzema discostandosi dalla ricostruzione che ne hanno fatto gli storici, e presentando un partigiano che tradisce e passa informazioni ai nazisti. Apriti cielo! E' arrivata immediatamente la scomunica da parte dei Dententori della Verità. In Italia se parli della Resistenza lo devi fare in un certo modo: tutto in bianco se sei di sinistra, tutto in nero (scusate il gioco di parole) se sei di destra. Se sei di sinistra i partigiani sono tutti eroi; se sei di destra erano tutte canaglie. Il grigio non è ammesso.

Mentre Spike Lee, che vede questa faccenda italiana da fuori, con gli occhi di un americano per di più scuro di pelle, proprio al grigio guarda: credo che la sua intenzione fosse di mostrare come nel macchinario della guerra ci rimettono tutti, come sia la gente qualsiasi a pagare il prezzo delle scelte folli dei potenti, come le generalizzazioni siano sempre pericolose. Gli americani non sono tutti buoni: gli ufficiali bianchi che comandano le truppe nere sono razzisti come i nazisti; i partigiani non sono tutti eroi: ci sono quelli che si vendicano di offese personali; i tedeschi non sono tutti mostri: un ufficiale della Wehrmacht risparmia la vita al protagonista nero, e gli dà la pistola che poi avrà un ruolo importante molti anni dopo; gli italiani non sono tutti fascisti, e così via.

Non che il film non abbia difetti; ma tenuto conto che era la prima volta che Spike Lee usciva dagli Stati Uniti, e che si cimentava in un film storico, sarebbe stato meglio essere un po' più generosi. Macché, tutta la critica cinematografica allineata a sinistra è stata lì a fare tiro a segno. Quella allineata a destra probabilmente il film neanche se l'è andato a vedere. Be', per risarcimento la mia valutazione è di otto, e credo che Lee meriterebbe le nostre scuse per come è stato trattato.

Va detto inoltre che il vero centro del film è l'esperienza dei soldati di colore nella II guerra mondiale, una specie di preistoria delle vicende di vita quotidiana afroamericana che Lee racconta di solito. Di questo aspetto si è taciuto o se ne è parlato con superficialità, perché della discriminazione subita dai neri americani che andavano a combattere e morire per gli Stati Uniti, qui da noi, non se ne sa molto, e figuriamoci se ne sanno qualcosa i critici cinematografici. Invece è una storia importante, che sta all'origine delle lotte per i diritti civili (accesesi proprio dopo la seconda guerra mondiale, guarda caso...).

Insomma, un film che andrebbe rivisto ora che è calato il polverone; un film che per ognuno dei suoi difetti ha pregi degni della massima considerazione.

Vicari evidently loves David Lynch. Mulholland Drive must be one of his favorite movies, as there are frequent quotations of its images in Il passato... But Vicari was clever enough to avoid making a Lynch movie, because all those who have tried have failed. He stuck to a solid thriller plot based on Carofiglio's novel, and set the film in Bari, as it should be, turning the sun-scorched Italian South into a nocturnal place of temptation and corruption. You have two young men: Giorgio, Law student, serious, hard-working, who wants to become a judge and spends his days on books; and Francesco, a gambler, a cardsharp, coming from a poor family, one who spends his days in the underworld. They accidentally meet at a party in a luxuriant villa one night, and become friends. What can they have in common? A lot more than Giorgio may suspect. They like poker, they like money, expensive cars, beautiful women, drugs. So the film is the story of Giorgio's corruption, as he discovers that Francesco's underworld is much more interesting and exciting than his previous life as a good boy. But where does this descent to hell end? Is hell just a metaphor, or is it something more substantial? Is it just a matter of those vices (gambling, using drugs, promiscuous sex) that are forbidden but that almost everybody practices, or are there bigger crimes to be committed? The relationship between Giorgio and Francesco is the main theme of the film, and poker games are no more than a metaphor of a whole lifestyle--a dangerous one, as it becomes clear as the movie reaches its ending...

Here you have three excellent actors (Germano, Riondino and Caselli are almost perfect for their characters), respectable directing, and an excellent choice of places, which give you a decent thriller. Decent but not memorable because suspense doesn't build up the way it should; when Francesco's character is fully revealed (I mean his side-business as a nighttime rapist), you almost expect it. It's not something that shocks you--and I suspect that this has something to do with how Vicari worked on Carofiglio's novel to produce the screenplay. He had to cut something to turn the novel into a film, as it's always done, but he probably cut too much.

One cannot deny that the director has a certain good taste: the images she builds are elegant and sometime there are virtuoso technical feats--but the problem is that this is a rather imitative movie. Tons of Lynch, which is easily recognizable, also the gradual derangement in the second part of the movie, with the not-very-original sort of ambiguity: is the detective's mind which is getting chaotic, or are we shown a dream of perversion and corruption (a possible reading of the final scene with the couple nonchalantly having breakfast as if nothing had happened). Fact is, one has to be Lynch to make Lynch's movies. It's a fascinating model, but very dangerous for people like Torre who do not have that sort of imaginative power. All in all a derivative movie, and one which--unlike Lynch's movies, even the weirdest ones--lacks the power to build a suspense of any kind. You know that the detective is going to be fascinated by the universe of scambisti (promiscuous couples) and is going to be attracted by prostitutes etc. Predictable, totally predictable. And boring, in the end.

The best Italian films almost always have a strong sense of landscape. And this is no exception. The place, which is probably in the province of Rovigo, along the river Po, is beautifully evoked by Mazzacurati. The story begins as a chronicle of everyday life in a very small town in Veneto (the area is called Polesine and it is near the Po delta). The only small event is the arrival of a new, young teacher in the local primary school. But this small event triggers other events, and somewhat disturbs the drowsy life of the place, peacefully drowned in the mists and the fog of the Po valley. But then, when 3/4 of the story have lapsed, there is a jolt, and the film turns into a crime story when the teacher is killed. It seems that everything is clear, and the culprit is quickly identified, arrested and sentenced--but things are not what they seem.

I can imagine how a Hollywood director might have managed this story. Thanks god the movie wasn't shot in Hollywood. It works perfectly the way it is: with its slow rhythm and its minimal but elegant directing style. It also manages to show viewers a tranche de vie of today's provincial Italy, and say something clever and not at all foregone about the difficult integration of immigrants.

All in all, one of the best Italian movies of the new century.

OK, the action aspect has been described in other comments. No need to repeat that it's extremely well done, and that it's powerful. The first 30' of the films are so gripping you feel you're going to die with the artificer.

I'd like to say something about other aspects of The Hurt Locker. First, the fact that, though only focusing on the 3 main characters, the members of the EOD team, Bigelow manages to put Iraqi people in the picture. Not trying to tell the story from their point of view, which would be very difficult and might easily sound false. But showing how the war in Iraq is fought among common people who are desperately trying to live a normal life. This creates a situation of deadly uncertainty, which is well caught in the movie, and also moral responsibility. The final scene, where the artificer talks to the human bomb, is not just gripping and suspenseful: it's also a sort of moral allegory. Can the US troops there defuse the bomb, which is a metaphor of a country totally out of control? Well, the ending of the scene probably tells you what's Bigelow opinion on it.

But let's go to the little lower layer. If danger is an addictive drug (that's what the film tells you right from the start), it should be said that William James is not the only addict in the film. He tries to get back home and live a normal life again with his wife and child. He can't. He gets back to Iraq. Is this only James' problem? Or are the US on the whole addicted to war, violence, danger? I think the ending tells another story, not just that of the protagonist. The man who cannot stop gambling on his ability to deactivate bombs may be an image of a country which cannot stop gambling on its ability to win wars (or to persuade itself it is winning the wars it's started).

All in all, a deeper film than it may seem at a first viewing.

There is something that one of the characters (the aging film director who pretends to be dead) says which may summarize all the film: "In Italy it's the dead who rule". True! This is a country without a future, in the hands of old and jaded men. And Bellocchio's cryptic portrait of the country, pivoted on the apparently senseless story of a director who has to film marriage parties to earn a living, manages to say a lot about what is not working here. But foreigners may miss the point, as it's not clearly expressed. I understand that Australian or Canadian people who watch this may get bored and wonder if there's a meaning--well, there's a meaning, but it's clear only to people who live here today, and keep their eyes wide open... like Bellocchio. Surely it's not one of his best films, and it's not as powerful as Buongiorno, notte, but it's worth seeing... for Italians who live in Italy.

Though the acting was bad (Italian TV actors may be REALLY bad, as they're often chosen because of their connections with politicos, not their skills), the directing was just average and there were several inconsistencies in the plot, this series must be rated high, because it's absolutely SCARY. I saw it when it was shown on the Italian state TV (RAI), and I remember it worked even on people who don't care for horror stories. The plot, its faults notwithstanding, is like a maelstrom: it takes you to bottomless abysses, and you can't do anything else, just be brought down and down and down.

The story focuses on a group of young people who get in touch with a sort of occultist sect which has been active since before W.W.II. Its chief is a dark character, whose name is Sinisgalli, who seems to have found a way to grant people immortality, but at a high cost. Sinisgalli is involved in some murders, and he also denounced Roman Jews to the Gestapo in 1944 in order to get their money. There are several plots which ultimately converge on a disquieting ending. The pace of the episodes is so well timed that they literally fly, leading you to a nightmare of terror and paranoia.

Highly recommended, though I doubt that there is an English version...

This is a somewhat abstract movie. Its basic idea is that two very different men, a coke-addict crooner and a failed football coach, have the same name, Antonio Pisapia. It might be a coincidence, but their lives are almost symmetrical: both try to get back to fame and success (the singer was a star until a sexual scandal and the abuse of cocaine made him disreputable - this may seem unrealistic today, but the story is set in the Italian 1980s, when you still could not do everything; as for the coach, he was a brilliant and clever player but his teammates broke his knee during a training because he didn't want to fix a match). Both characters have a past they regret, and are unable to build the future they wish. Both have problems in their personal relations. Both are talented, but live in a place and a time where nobody cares about talent. Both are surrounded by cynical people who do not respect integrity, seriousness, passion, personality.

However, the stories of the two men will cross in the end, when Pisapia the coach commits suicide, having understood he is never going to get a team to train, and Pisapia the singer takes revenge by shooting the owner of the football team which refused to hire the coach. I can't say that the ending is fully persuasive: it looks like something put there to connect the two independent plots of the movie, which might have stayed independent, or should have been connected in a more meaningful way. However, the two actors (Andrea Renzi, mostly a theater actor, and Toni Servillo) deliver two good performance, and the world they live in is well rendered by Sorrentino. It may sometime remind of the movies Fassbinder was making in the 1970s, with a similar atmosphere of disaffection and human coldness.

It's a noir, no doubt... you even have the dark lady. Take three excellent actors, a well-chosen setting, a young and talented director, and you have L'imbalsamatore. Once again, when an Italian director is really good, like Sergio Leone, he can take an American film genre, turn it upside down and make a great Italian movie. However, Garrone proved how good he is not just by filming this, but by making another masterpiece, that is, Gomorra. If you like this one, try also the other movie. Basically one of the plots of Gomorra is set in the same places where L'imbalsamatore is set.

Another important element of the film is the landscape. When Italian directors are at their best, they can render landscape like no one. Garrone can do this with the wastelands of Northern Campania.

Hats off, then, to Ernesto Mahieux, who delivers an impressive performance that you won't forget easily...

Unfortunately the interesting topic chosen by Giordana, and the quite good acting by Zingaretti have been wasted due to the terribly poor acting of Bellucci. That she wasn't really an actress I suspected, as she was always only _shown_ in US films, and they never allowed her to utter more than a few words; now I can see why. She's as expressive as a sofa, as passionate as a brick, as professional as somebody who has never even seen a film. What a pity! With one of the good actresses who work in Italian cinema today (for example Vittoria Mezzogiorno) it could have been a very good film, though, compared to the other Italian movie at Cannes, Gomorra, we are in a different, lower league. Garrone is a real film director; Giordana is a gifted TV director (in fact his best thing so far is a TV series, La meglio gioventù). Once again: what a pity. What a waste.

After too many years I have finally seen an Italian film that doesn't make me feel regret for the old glories of our cinema (Fellini, Rossellini, etc.). Gomorra (obviously a pun on the name of the Neapolitan mafia, "camorra") is a terrible masterpiece--Yeats talked of a terrible beauty and here you are, this is it. Great direction, great stories (it's a multiple plot film), great acting. But--above all--here you have the sense of the landscape which has always been the hallmark of great Italian films (especially the attention to urban landscape that you have in Rossellini, Pasolini, De Sica). And Garrone managed to mix an almost neo-realistic approach with one of the most genuinely American film genres, the gangster movie.

The only problem is that Neaples and its hinterland (especially Caserta) are like that, and that is the country we live in, after all.

Another interesting feature of the film is the language. All characters speak in unadulterated Neapolitan and Casertan dialect, and that forced the director to put subtitles in the *Italian* edition of the film. It adds a lot to the estrangement you may feel, and to the sheer power of the film.

However, let me repeat it: this is on the same level of our classics of the 1940s and 1950s. And, after his stunning debut with L'imbalsamatore, Matteo Garrone has persuaded me he's the Next Big Thing in Italian cinema. (He was also helped by Saviano's book, though.)

Surely Daniel Day-Lewis' performance is outstanding. He's the real artist among professionals. I think there is no other actor like him around now for such roles. So let's give the movie 5 points. But where is the rest of the film? Direction is good, soundtrack interesting, but the plot? Let's be honest, the plot does not work. Because you have only the oilman on the screen, and all the rest is very thin--too thin. I'd have to say "underdeveloped". The problem is the screenplay. There are many ideas that might have worked very well, i.e. playing the opposition between the sly man of oil and the crooked man of faith. But nothing. It's left there. All in all, I was disappointed. Though surely Day-Lewis deserved his Academy Award.

I am surprised to find such negative comments. The film is one of the best noir films ever made in Italy. Alessio Boni is, as usual, perfect (he was great in La meglio gioventù, but here his performance is outstanding). The director added some ideas that are not in the novel, but the added element fit the plot perfectly. All in all, it's as good as Carlotto's slim novel, and that is probably the best book Carlotto ever wrote. I reckon both Soavi and Boni understood that the trick was the way the protagonist was portrayed: a poisonous snake with a charming appearance. An apparently nice guy who is actually a nasty thug, only interested in money, power--also with a sadistic streak. Not the usual character in Italian cinema, but they managed to make it believable. The final scene, with the protagonist watching the girl's agony is absolutely perfect. There you fully realize what sort of a man he really is. And then you begin to wonder what sort of a world is that which accepts him so readily... which is probably the real point that both the novel and the film want to make.

Compared to Battle of Britain, this is a real film, with real characters and a real plot. Battle of Britain is basically a documentary with the occasional Lawrence Olivier and Michael Caine, but the real protagonists are the Spits, the Hurricanes, etc. Here, on the other hand, you have two well-wrought characters (actually three) and a real plot. I strongly recommend it to anybody, even to those who are not particularly fond of war movies. It's well filmed, and I wonder what the director might do if he had the big capitals behind him. And I do not think that it's over-sentimental. It's only that in the fighters you have real people, with real feelings and a real life--as real as any fictional life in any great film.

As a fairy tale with the good queen who defeats the black hats, it's quite nice. Let's add that Blanchett is a wonderful actress, and one would like to see her in something more serious.

Not that you get bored while seeing the film. And if you're totally ignorant of English history, you won't be annoyed by the many inaccuracies and lies.

The film is obviously victim of political correctness. Since Elizabeth is a woman who managed to stay free in that age of male domination, she must be good. Well, historian says she was tough, she was ruthless, and she knew politics... but she was quite different from the protagonist of this fairy tale.

Then, the producers of the film are trying to sell British people the idea that the British empire was founded by a progressive and open-minded queen. Not at all. The real founder was one who is totally out of fashion today, a blood-thirsty white male protestant Anglo-Saxon bastard called Oliver Cromwell, who is totally politically incorrect, but actually did the job. And Elizabeth was not such a progressive woman.

However, as I have already said, it's a nice fairy tale, the costumes are very good, Blanchett is special... and the 1588 battle in the Channel is not bad, though it's mostly computer graphics and it shows--looks a bit like a video game.

I think Goya is after all just a pretext. What Forman wanted to talk about is how people are overwhelmed by history. It's a difficult idea to be grasped for people who live in wealthy societies where nothing much happens and the biggest problems are having more money than you already have and what to do on Saturday night. But Forman manages to show you how you can be powerless and doomed when history moves fast--too fast. The real protagonist of the story is not the painter, but the former Dominican priest, whose life is totally changed--and ultimately destroyed--by the big historical events (the French Revolution, the French invasion of Spain, the English invasion of Spain, the Restoration). The same may be said for the other characters in the story. Goya is there as a witness, and as the symbolic figure of the artist who manages to create something even out of utter destruction. One could say that Goya's Ghosts are exactly those people and events Goya witnessed and can't get rid of, so that he has to turn them into drawings and paintings; but the term "ghost" also refers to what individuals are like in those moments when everything is changing and moving towards God knows what goal. The priest and the young girl and all the other people in the story are just pawns of history, who strut and fret on the stage and then disappear. Ghosts, because they can be annihilated in any moment. It's a sad truth, but it's truth, notwithstanding Hollywood's mythologies of super-heroes that can win against all odds. Joyce said that history is a nightmare one tries to wake up from; Forman showed us the nightmare, and the last nightmarish scene of this movie is one of those you can't forget.

First came Chandler. Then the films based on his novels. Then this. And then it took a long time to get to LA Confidential, Collateral, The Big Lebowsky, Mulholland Drive. And Mike Davis. This film is a milestone in the evolution of the legend of L.A.--probably the only US city that can compete with NYC in celebrity all around the world. And L.A. is a mirror of the US, just like NYC.

Definitely one of the movies that have build our subconscious. Wim Wenders once said "The Americans have colonized our subconscious". Well, this film probably did so: but it was a positive form of colonization. The only one, perhaps.

When you say Spielberg people always think of Schindler, Save Private Ryan, ET, whatever. They sometime go back to Duel (still his best movie). Nobody comes up with Amistad. Why? It's a riddle. Amistad is definitely better than Jurassic (well, I admit it's good for kids, but that's all), absolutely better than AI (uggh!). Yet... it's a terribly neglected movie.

Maybe it's not a riddle, anyway. The issue it discusses is deeply embedded in US history. And in the US there are still too many who don't like people with dark skin. People who prefer the blatantly patriotic Save Private Ryan ("Hey! WE won W.W.II, we and Tom Hanks!") to a film which shows divided US, a complex political and legal clash, a complicated trial and (who knows?) too many absolutely black actors (I appreciate Spiel-burg's bold choice to hire African actors, which give the film something more, something special).

Abroad... well, in many countries intellectuals dislike Hollywood kolossals, so they probably didn't see this movie. And people who weren't intellectuals got lost among so many references to US history. Then the film is very long, and you fully grasp all the legal, ethical and political implications of the facts only the 2nd or the 3rd time you watch it.

What a pity! Though I disagree with the final message ("the US may be wrong sometime but then comes uncle Lincoln who solves the problem..."), and find some scenes a bit didactic, I have to say it's a fascinating film with some great moments. And Anthony Hopkins with an American accent as Quincy Adams is something special.

I guess other people who commented on this film were either uninformed or unfair--or both unfair and uninformed. The true story of the movie is this: the so-called Banda della Magliana is a real criminal organization which dominated the Roman underworld in the late 70s and the 80s, busy gathering immense capitals out the heroin market and protected by a web of political connections. Members of the band were used in some political murders and were good friends of powerful Sicilian mafia bosses such as Pippo Calo'. And that's history. The end of the Magliana Gang came partly because of a bloody internal war which opposed the two components of the organization, partly because of police investigations and arrests.

The novel (Romanzo criminale, by Giancarlo De Cataldo) is based on the real story. De Cataldo is a good writer and a judge. He was involved in the trial which sentenced to life prison several members of the gang. I guess this makes him quite an expert on the matter. Romanzo criminale is heavily indebted to Ellroy and to Pier Paolo Pasolini, the great Italian director, poet, novelist and essayist who was brutally slaughtered in 1975 (shortly before the birth of the Magliana Gang). De Cataldo managed to blend Ellroy's politicized hard-boiled to Pasolini's lyricism of degradation and marginality. The result is a really compelling novel which sort of continues Pasolini's exploration of Rome and its suburbs, thus reconstructing a forgotten chapter of our national history.

Then comes the film. As soon as I was told the director was Michele Placido I was totally disappointed. Placido is a decent actor but a lousy director, yet he's so popular and has such good connections he always manages to find money for his films.

But the film was much better than I expected. I even managed to stomach Stefano Accorsi's acting (talk about overrated movie stars...), because he was surrounded by such talents he was sort of neutralized. Kim Rossi Stuart was extremely good as il Freddo and Pierfrancesco Favino was a brutal and persuading Libanese (those are the two founders of the gang, whose real names are not used both in the film and in the novel). And yes, its visual aspect was absolutely good, much better than many other shoddy things made in Italy today (it's a real pity that the country of Rossellini, Pasolini, and Fellini is today reduced to producing such dreck as Benigni's and Muccino's things).

Obviously the novel is not a history book: it does not mirror perfectly the true story of the Magliana Gang. And there are many differences between the movie and the novel, especially at the beginning and at the end. All in all the film is more melodramatic than De Cataldo's novel, and the plot line has been simplified (in ways I cannot explain as to avoid spoilers). Yet it retains much of the power of the novel, also because De Cataldo was involved in writing the screenplay.

As for another commentator's remarks about criminal organization being destroyed by internal fight, not by police forces intervention, well, that's what usually happens, both in Italy and in other Western countries... unless you believe in Hollywood flicks, where Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson always defeat the black hats.

Like other (usually US) films The Murder... is disturbing and mesmerizing. The dirty quality of images (in some moments bewilderingly amateurish, ins others incredibly sophisticated), the acting, the disjointed plot, the weirdness of some scenes (like the one in the car parking), Gazzara's sublime acting, the wonderful choice of places and times... it all gives you an impression of the States like they really are, not the sanitized image you find in so many Holy-Wood flicks (not all of them, I admit, but about 85%...). Such a movie is like The Searchers or Taxi Driver or Raging Bull, unfathomable and greater than life, but in some way disturbingly like life. And the character of Cosmo Vitelli is one of those enigmatic figures that leaves you wondering whether you have been shown the story of an idiot or the story of a saint. Unforgettable.

"However, two years later, Moro was kidnapped and murdered by communist terrorists and the joke went stale." This is taken from the trivia about Todo modo. I don't think such a film can be described as a joke. However, the movie ain't stale, mister. Not at all. I saw it a few days ago (it was something of an event because obviously Italian TV does NOT show such films), and it was sort of a shock. Who cares about Moro and the DC? Moro died in 1978 and the Democrazia Cristiana does not exist anymore (though many politicians who belonged to that party are still in power today). But Italy is still like that. Todo modo is definitely not a realistic film. It's a claustrophobic nightmare, a deranged vision of the worst aspects of my country. But it's still true. It still applies. It ain't stale, not at all. Besides, it features three breath-taking performances by very different actors such as Ciccio Ingrassia (one of our greatest actors, unjustly underrated because of his success as a B-movie comedian), Gian Maria Volontè (one of the greatest actors ever, had he lived and worked in the USA he would be mentioned just everywhere) and Marcello Mastroianni (a famous actor I don't always like, but this is his best performance with his cynical role in La dolce vita). It's a real shame there's no DVD available. But then our prime minister is Silvio Berlusconi, we can't complain... this is what we deserve.

I am a bit of a war movie buff. I am also interested in military history, and W.W.I is one of my specialties, since I even got my PhD with a dissertation on W.W.I narratives. I also discussed Emilio Lussu's novel (Un anno sull'altipiano) Rosi's film is based on. Well, sometime when they make a film out of a novel you love, you may get disappointed. I wasn't. In many points Rosi wasn't faithful to the novel, but hey, that's what screenplays must be. The film is gorgeous nonetheless. What makes me rather sad is the horrible fact that there is no DVD version of this authentic masterpiece of world cinema, one of the most intelligent and impressive war films ever. This is a shame for Italy. Low-level Italian B-movies of the 70s have been made into DVDs, but this film hasn't. It's a real shame.

Those here who have bashed the film have grossly misunderstood Kippur. Either they look for a blow-blam-bang Holy-wood flick, which it isn't; or for a highly reliable reconstruction (which Save Private Ryan, extolled by some, is only in part: the first scene is almost like-it-really-was, the last scene is blow-blam-bang with Matt Damon and Tom Hanks instead of Chuck Norris and Steven Seagal). Kippur is a highly personal film, in that war is filtered through the very personal point of view of a sophisticated director. Amos Gitai is close to Antonioni; and in directing a war movie he couldn't forget the Lesson of the Master. Hence the minimal dialogue, hence the dilated times, hence the attention to the setting more than the characters. You try to watch Deserto rosso and then Kippur and you'll notice just how much they have in common. Then, if you don't like Antonioni, it's your own business, go for the blow-blam-bang stuff. However, as for action movies, I think Black Hawk Down is better than SPR. I may be wrong...