In the movie Crimson Tide, Russian rebels take control of nuclear missiles, which they threaten to launch, starting nuclear war with the United States, if their demands are not met.  Leaves are canceled, and Commander Hunter (Denzel Washington) is assigned to be the executive officer aboard the Alabama, a nuclear submarine, whose commanding officer is Captain Ramsey (Gene Hackman).

When we first see Hunter, he and his wife are throwing a birthday party for their daughter, who is five years old.  He also has an eight-year-old son.  When we first see Captain Ramsey, all we see is a dog, which we assume is the extent of his “family.”  So, we know we are supposed to like Hunter, but be suspicious of Ramsey.

Ramsey is contemptuous of Hunter.  When interviewing him, Ramsey smirks when he reads that Hunter spent a year at Harvard.  Even though Hunter was at the top of the list for replacing the submarine’s executive officer, Ramsey belittles Hunter by pointing out that it was a short list.  He further shows what he thinks of Hunter by saying that the previous executive officer was the best he ever had, implying that Hunter will never be able to measure up.  When Ramsey finds out that Hunter likes to ride horses, his favorite being an Arabian, Ramsey disingenuously remarks that he wouldn’t be able to handle an Arabian.  “Just give me an old paint,” he says, sharing a knowing chuckle with the Chief of the Boat.  They clearly regard the riding of an Arabian horse as elitist.  Then we find out that Ramsey is a sexist and misogynist, as he goes on to compare horses to high school girls:

Yeah, horses are fascinating animals.  Dumb as fence posts, but very intuitive.  In that way, they’re not too different from high school girls.  They might not have a brain in their head, but they do know all the boys want to fuck ’em.  Don’t have to be able to read Ulysses to know where they’re comin’ from.

What do you bet that Hunter is a Democrat, and Ramsey is a Republican?

In any event, Ramsey strikes us as a bully, making fun of a subordinate who just has to sit there and take it.  He is small-minded and petty, holding a grudge against Hunter on account of his education, indirectly referring to him as an “egghead.”  Later on, Hunter’s friend, Lieutenant Ince, explains to Hunter what we have already figured out:

To him, you’re Annapolis, Harvard, expert on theory, well-versed in world affairs. Ha!  He’s had his head up his ass driving ships for the last twenty-five years.  He’s probably a little paranoid about that.  I mean, Navy’s all he’s got.  Navy and that little rat-dog of his.  That’s why his wife left him.

Now, the scriptwriters could have made him a widower, having Ince say, “Navy’s all he’s got.  Navy and that little rat-dog of his, ever since his wife died.”  But that would have made him a sympathetic figure, and we couldn’t have that.  In fact, the writers didn’t even vouchsafe him a no-fault divorce.  Instead, the writers had Ince say that his wife left him, from which we are to imagine that she just got fed up with him because he was an insufferable jerk.

Try to imagine that it was Ramsey who, at the beginning of the movie, was filming his granddaughter’s birthday party when the call came in for him to prepare to ship out, while it was Hunter whose wife left him.  That would have made this an interesting movie, with both Ramsey and Hunter playing less predictable roles.  Instead, we get a simplistic opposition—good family man versus bad family man—leading to a predictable outcome.

After they have boarded the submarine and left port, Ramsey expresses his one regret about heading out to sea:  “My last breath of polluted air for the next sixty-five days,” he says, as he inhales on his cigar.  “I don’t trust air I can’t see.”  Now we know he is a Republican.

Tension builds between Ramsey and Hunter.  Then they receive orders to launch nuclear missiles to take out the rebel missiles.  Before they can do that, they are almost torpedoed by a Russian submarine, which causes some damage.  The end result is that they lose communication with Washington, D.C. just as a final message was coming through, of which they get only a fragment.  Ramsey is determined to proceed according to the last complete order received, which was to launch nuclear missiles at the rebel missile sites.  Hunter argues that they should not proceed, because the message fragment might have been an order to cancel the launch.  Let other submarines, which are not damaged and out of communication, do what needs to be done, he argues.  When Ramsey tries to break protocol and replace Hunter, so that he can have someone concur with his order to launch, the result is a mutiny and then a counter mutiny.

Perhaps the most condescending part of this movie is the way the sailors are depicted as being deep into pop culture.  It’s not so bad when they play trivia regarding submarine movies like The Enemy Below and Run Silent Run Deep, but when they get into fights over the Silver Surfer and have to be inspired by comparisons to Star Trek, we have to wonder what kind of sailors are on that submarine.  Actually, the question we really have to ask is, what kind of regard do the scriptwriters have for the intended audience?  They are obviously appealing to all the science-fiction and comic-book nerds that will be watching this movie, so that they can see themselves as fitting right in on that submarine, just like real men.  And they are presumably appealing to movie-nerds like me as well, to make us suppose we would fit right in too, but I have no illusions on that score.

After Ramsey retakes command of the submarine, radio contact is on the verge of being restored.  He agrees to wait three minutes for a confirmation to launch.  While they wait, in order to keep from being bored, he starts talking to Hunter again about horses:

Ramsey:  Speaking of horses, did you ever see those Lipizzaner stallions?

Hunter:  What?

Ramsey:  From Portugal.  The Lipizzaner stallions.  The most highly trained horses in the world. They’re all white.

Hunter:  Yes, sir.

Ramsey:  “Yes, sir,” you’re aware they’re all white or “yes, sir,” you’ve seen them?

Hunter:  Yes, sir, I’ve seen them.  Yes, sir, I’m aware that they’re all white.  They’re not from Portugal.  They’re from Spain.  And at birth, they’re not white, they’re black.

While I admit that it’s cute the way the scriptwriters use these conversations about horses as a unifying theme for these two men, I have to wonder about the emphasis being placed by Ramsey on the fact that the horses are white.  Is this supposed to be an indirect way for Ramsey to express his attitude of white supremacy?  And is Hunter’s response supposed to suggest that these horses are essentially black, since they are born that way?  It seems almost too dumb to countenance.  And yet, if that is not the point of this conversation, then what is?

In the end, radio contact is restored, proving that Hunter was right:  the order to launch missiles had been cancelled.  Subsequently, at a hearing on these events, Ramsey is allowed to be magnanimous in defeat, taking early retirement and recommending Hunter be given his next command.

Any chance for suspense in this movie is undermined by the fact that the ending is completely predictable.  First of all, in any movie you have ever seen in which someone wants to launch nuclear weapons, that person is either crazy, as in Dr. Strangelove or:  How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964); evil, as in The Dead Zone (1983); or wrongheaded, as in Twilight’s Last Gleaming (1977).  So, we know there is no way that it is going to turn out that Ramsey is right and Hunter is wrong, though we can try to imagine two possible endings going against this formula.

Ending One:  Ramsey succeeds in launching the missiles. And it is good he did too, because all the other American submarines in the area had been taken out by Russian submarines.  As a result, the missiles controlled by the rebels are destroyed, and even the Russians are grateful for Ramsey’s bold and decisive action.  Ramsey is promoted to admiral, while Hunter is court-martialed and sentenced to thirty years in military prison.

Ending Two:  Hunter succeeds in preventing Ramsey from taking out the rebel sites.  As a result, the rebels are able to launch their missiles, full scale thermonuclear war breaks out, hundreds of millions of people die immediately, and the Earth is poisoned with radioactivity.  Hunter realizes he was wrong, as he and the other members of the crew slowly begin dying of radiation sickness.

Needless to say, those two endings, though certainly possible in real life, are unthinkable for a movie.  On the Beach (1959) has the world coming to an end as a result of nuclear war and the radioactive fallout that follows, but it is not an example of Ending Two because no one on the nuclear submarine is to blame.  Notably, this movie did not come up during the trivia game about submarine movies.

The race of the two officers also makes the outcome predictable.  We cannot simply switch the roles of these two actors, because Gene Hackman is about twenty-five years older than Denzel Washington.  But let’s use our imagination.  Suppose they had selected Morgan Freeman to play Captain Ramsey and Brad Pitt to play Commander Hunter.  And then suppose that everything that happened was otherwise the same.  For example, Morgan Freeman punches Brad Pitt twice in the face for refusing to go along with the missile launch.  But in the end, Morgan Freeman is proven to be wrong.

While something like that could happen in real life, this too would be unthinkable for a movie.

Of course, we could have Morgan Freeman’s Ramsey turn out to be right, launching the missiles and saving the day, while Brad Pitt’s Hunter is court-martialed, as imagined in Ending One above.  That would preserve the requirements regarding race, but at the expense of violating the principle that whoever wants to launch nuclear weapons is crazy, evil, or wrongheaded.

Finally, there was no way that the wholesome family man was going to turn out to be wrong, while the man whose wife left him was going to turn out to be right.

Suffice it to say that the ending of this movie is triply predictable:  the officer that is (1) African American, (2) a good family man, and (3) opposed to launching nuclear missiles must prevail over the officer that is (1) white, (2) a bad family man, and (3) in favor of launching nuclear missiles.

A variation on this interplay of nuclear weapons and African Americans occurs in The Sum of All Fears (2002).  In that movie, a bunch of neo-Nazis have decided to do what Hitler should have done:  get the Americans and the Russians to fight each other.  To that end, they purchase a nuclear bomb on the black market, which they intend to detonate in the United States, thereby precipitating World War III.

In the first part of this movie, we aren’t too worried, because Morgan Freeman plays William Cabot, Director of the C.I.A.  Should the neo-Nazis succeed in their plan to explode the nuke, he will provide the wise counsel that President Fowler (James Cromwell) needs to keep from launching a misguided attack on the Russians.  However, when the nuclear device goes off at a football game, Cabot is mortally wounded.  Now there are nothing but white males running things in the White House, and they are all becoming emotional and irrational.  They want to launch a nuclear strike against the Russians.  We know they would be wrong to do so, because it was not the Russians that were responsible for nuking that football game.  But that knowledge is superfluous, because we already know that anyone in a movie that wants to launch nuclear weapons is in the wrong.

Things are worse in Russia.  At least here in the United States, after the death of Cabot, there are still some low-level, African-American officers and intelligence analysts to help keep things on an even keel; but over in Russia, they don’t have any African Americans at all.

Therefore, it’s all up to Jack Ryan (Ben Affleck), Cabot’s top analyst in the C.I.A.  He knows that the bomb’s plutonium was manufactured in the United States, so the attack must be a rogue operation.  But he can’t get through to the president because he and all his top aides are white, and they won’t listen.

Ryan goes to the Pentagon, but things don’t look good.  They’re all white, and they won’t listen.

But wait!  There’s a black general.  Oh, thank God!  He’ll listen.

And listen he does, allowing Ryan to save the day.

And so it is that if you are going to make a movie about the possibility of nuclear war, the only way the movie will have any suspense is if you make it look as though there are no African Americans around to keep the white males from blowing up the world.

When watching Strategic Air Command, you almost expect to hear Reed Hadley saying, “These are the men of the Strategic Air Command, who stand ready to defend our nation against nuclear attack…,” and so forth, accompanied by triumphal music, determined to inspire us with patriotic admiration.

I am tempted to say that this is a dated movie, one that might have had some resonance in the 1950s, when the threat of nuclear attack seemed very real, except for one thing:  I was around in those days, and contrary to what you may have heard, children were not terrified by the threat of the hydrogen bomb.  We use to love getting out of class to go see those films demonstrating the destructiveness of this weapon.  It was better than doing long division.  The teachers would tell us that if we saw a flash of light, we should immediately “duck and cover,” but we joked about the futility in that.  One wise guy posted a note on the wall, saying, “In case of nuclear attack:  (1) Bend over.  (2) Put your head between your legs. (3) Kiss your ass goodbye.”  So, what I am trying to say in all this is that even in 1955, this movie would have been boring.  It’s just that it is even more so today.

As a check on how people of the day may have reacted to this movie, I consulted Bosley Crowther’s review for the New York Times.  He devotes the first six paragraphs to talking about the visuals.  In the seventh paragraph, he finally gets around to talking about the plot and the acting.  But then, given the plot and the acting, he might just as well have devoted a couple more paragraphs to the splendors of Vista Vision.

James Stewart plays Dutch Holland, a professional baseball player.  He was a pilot during World War II, and now, being in the reserves, he is called back to active duty to fly the long range bombers that carry a nuclear payload in case World War III should break out.  His wife Sally, June Allyson, really shouldn’t worry her pretty little head about the important work men have to do, but being a woman, she is all sentiment and feeling, and she just doesn’t understand her husband, who has to make all the big decisions in their marriage without consulting her, because a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

Unfortunately, World War III does not break out.  That means the movie must manufacture moments of dramatic tension:  a seemingly hostile situation just turns out to be a drill; an engine catches on fire, causing a crash; a bomber almost runs out of fuel, and Dutch has to land in the fog.  It makes you sympathetic to the device in Top Gun (1986), in which a dogfight occurs between American fighter planes and those of an unnamed enemy, even though the country is not at war.  Let’s face it.  Military movies set during peacetime can be pretty dull.

During the crash that occurred because the engine caught on fire, Dutch injured his shoulder.  This eventually leads to his being discharged, giving us the typical Hollywood ending:  Dutch got the satisfaction of doing the right thing by deciding to make a career out of being in the Air Force in spite of Sally’s objections, and Sally gets her way when he is forced to return to civilian life.  Of course, with an injured shoulder, it is unlikely that he will ever play third base again, which is in keeping with the sense of sacrifice that the men of SAC must make to keep this nation safe, as Reed Hadley might have said, just before the credits start to roll.

Because we are Americans, it is second nature for us to pull for American soldiers in a war movie, especially a World War II movie where we know that the Nazis are the most evil enemy we have ever fought.  But by the time this movie was over, I was pretty much past those preconceptions.

Had I not known anything about WWII, I would have been pulling for the Germans to kill all the evil Americans, who murder surrendering prisoners, rape innocent women, act like brutes, and bully the new recruit because he is a little guy who can’t defend himself.  The only suggestion that the Germans were evil in this movie was the way they hanged the draft dodgers and forced young teenagers to fight, but that seems almost benign compared to what we see the Americans do.

The movie centers around a tank crew led by Don “Wardaddy” Collier (Brad Pitt).  A replacement, Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman), is added to the crew, and he is immediately badgered and bullied by the rest of them, all of whom are bigger than he is in addition to outnumbering him, so there is no chance that he could defend himself.  You see, there they are in the middle of Germany toward the end of the war, but this tank crew isn’t satisfied to have the Germans for enemies, so they figure they will try to make an enemy out of this new guy as well.

Now, Don’s motive for treating Norman roughly is to toughen him up, so that he will be able to commit war crimes just like the rest of them.  But Grady “Coon-Ass” Travis (Jon Bernthal) and Trini “Gordo” Garcia (Michael Peña) are mean to him for a much more basic reason, which is that cruelty is fun.  I found myself hoping that Norman was just waiting for the chance to be alone with any one of them and would then put a bullet in his back.

The ultimate absurdity in this movie comes when Don and Norman go into an apartment where there are two German women.  Don says to Norman regarding the younger of the two, “If you don’t take her into that bedroom, I will.”  Reluctantly, Norman takes the girl into the bedroom.  When they close the door behind them, Don says to the other woman, “They’re young, and they’re alive.”  Aw!  Isn’t that sweet?  Rape can be so lovely and romantic when it occurs during wartime.

I really was glad that, except for Norman, the Americans in the tank all died in the end.  They deserved it.

As we know, The Birth of a Nation (1915), directed by D.W. Griffith, justifies the institution of slavery and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction as the need to protect white women from Negro lust.  Later that year, Griffith also produced Martyrs of the Alamo, which reveals that the war in which Texas declared and won its independence from Mexico was brought about by Mexican lust for white women.  So many white women were being accosted by the Mexican soldiers, it seems, that the white men finally had to take up arms to protect them.  When Santa Anna and his troops come in to put down the rebellion, the Texians took refuge in the Alamo, and we all know what happened next.

As an example of how cruel and ruthless the Mexican soldiers are, we see a scene in which a little boy is bayonetted, his body picked up and flung out of the way.  And when the battle is over, Santa Anna has anyone that survived the massacre executed, except for good-looking white women, of course.  We see an old woman being taken away for execution, while a young, pretty blonde is spared.  The intertitle notes that Santa Anna is an inveterate drug fiend known for his shameless orgies.  Right after that, we see him grabbing the pretty blonde, but she slaps him and gets away from him.  By the way, Santa Anna is played by Walter Long, the same man that played Gus in The Birth of a Nation, the black man that tried to rape Flora.

We have all heard how the Mexican soldiers were caught off guard when Sam Houston attacked at San Jacinto because they were taking their siesta.  But in addition to that, according to this movie, Santa Anna, appearing somewhat stoned, is busy having women dance for him, while a Mexican guard watches the show himself instead of watching for such things as an advancing army of Texians.  So, Mexican lust not only was the cause of the Texas revolution, it was also the cause of Mexico’s defeat as well.

Except for Clara Bow, I did not recognize the main actors in Wings, but that is not unusual for a silent film. So when I saw Gary Cooper, I was stunned, especially when it turned out that he only had a bit part. It is hard to believe that the producer of this movie did not immediately see his star quality and make more of it.

In any event, the story is about a couple of fighter pilots during World War I, plus a complicated side story of unrequited love involving a couple of women, one of which is played by the above-mentioned Clara Bow. The pilot named Dave (Richard Arlen) is obviously doomed. The sad farewell to his parents is the first clue. Then he tells his friend Jack (Charles Rogers) that he thinks the next flying mission will be his last, and asks him to see that his parents get his medal. Finally, he forgets the teddy bear that is his good luck charm. I’d call them clichés, but for all I know, this may be the first movie in which they occurred.

The only serious flaw is a scene in Paris where Jack starts seeing bubbles. It goes on way too long, almost as if the director, William Wellman, was so excited by this gimmick that he just could not get enough. There are plenty of action sequences to make up for this, however, much of it quite graphic, including a pilot spitting up blood, and another with blood spurting from his chest, something normally not seen in movies until the 1960s.

And, of course, no World War I movie would be complete without men climbing out of their trenches, charging the German lines, and being slaughtered by machine-gun fire. Has there ever been a movie in which the Germans get out of their trenches, charge the Allied lines, and get slaughtered in that fashion?  If you went by the movies, you’d probably think the Germans never made that mistake, in which case you have to wonder why they didn’t win the war.  In one scene, a soldier who has been blinded carries another soldier who cannot walk. Together, they continue to move toward the Germans along with the others. I don’t know what they thought they would do when they got there, except die, which is what they did. I guess we are supposed to admire their dedication.

Regarding the Axis powers of the Second World War, we have always been willing to cut the Italians a big old break. The Japanese pulled a sneak attack on us at Pearl Harbor, and the Germans were responsible for the holocaust, but we like to think that the Italians were basically good people who just got carried away by Mussolini’s speeches. And so, an actual incident during the war, when the Italians teamed up with the Greeks to fight against their former allies, the Germans, fits right in with our inclination to grant the Italians favorable treatment.

In the movie Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, the Italian soldiers that occupy a Greek island have not seen any real action, but that is not surprising, because I have never seen an Italian soldier kill an American in a World War II movie. Moreover, they don’t seem to care about the war. They just want to sing opera. Isn’t that nice? The Greeks also seem to like the Italians better. Despite the fact that the Italians are still part of the Axis forces at this point in the movie, nobody seems to have a problem with the fact that Palagia (Penélope Cruz) is obviously in love with an Italian officer, Captain Corelli (Nicolas Cage), and even has sex with him; but another girl, who just gives a German officer a friendly kiss on the cheek, is lynched by the Greeks for being a traitor.

Reality or no reality, the decision by the Italians to fight with the Greeks against the Germans rather than simply handing over their arms when Mussolini surrenders to the Allies turns out to be a big mistake, because except for Corelli, they are all slaughtered by the Germans for being traitors. But then, that only makes us like the Italians even more.

Ideally, a movie should make sense on its own terms. It is a bad movie when scenes can only be explained by external logic, by what was going on in the mind of the director or screenwriter. John Ford was once asked, regarding the movie Stagecoach (1939), why the Indians chasing the stagecoach didn’t just shoot the horses, and his answer was, “Then there wouldn’t have been any movie,” which was an example of external logic. Actually, he was just being a smart aleck, because he could have said that the Indians wanted to capture the horses alive, which would have made sense, and more importantly, would have made the scene explicable in terms of internal logic alone.

A big problem with Bitter Victory, a movie about British commandos ordered to make a raid on Benghazi to steal documents from the German headquarters, is that too much of what happens in the movie is explicable only in terms of external logic. Nicholas Ray, the director, had some idea in his head about how things should turn out, which leads to one forced scene after another. The first one occurs in England before the commandos set out on their mission.  Captain Leith (Richard Burton) sees Jane (Ruth Roman) sitting at a table in a military night club. No sooner does he recognize her than Major Brand (Curd Jürgens) walks up beside him and asks Leith if he would like to meet his wife. What follows is a scene reminiscent of Casablanca, in which it becomes clear that Leith and Jane were once lovers, and cryptic remarks pass back and forth between them while Brand takes it all in, not understanding the particulars of the remarks but gleaning their general significance nevertheless. Because we have seen this sort of thing before, we question it more than we might have when seeing it for the first time.

In other words, the most natural thing for Leith to do when Brand asks him if he wants to meet his wife would be to say, “You mean Jane? I knew Jane before the war. I was just going over to say ‘Hi.’” Now, of course they would not admit they had been lovers, but there is no reason for Leith and Jane to deny they even knew each other, especially since their innuendoes make their previous relationship so obvious. By concealing that they knew each other and then making the concealment obvious, they only made things worse. So, why did they do this? Internal logic fails us here, and we are forced to reach for external logic. Ray wanted Brand to find out that Leith and Jane were once secretly lovers so that he would become jealous, and so Ray concocted this hurried, unrealistic scene to that end.

After the mission is complete, the commandos have to escape by walking through the desert.  However, two men are too injured to walk. Brand tells Leith he will have to stay behind with the wounded men until they die and then catch up with the rest of the men. That makes no sense. If they are going to die anyway, just leave them behind. Furthermore, in a much later scene, Brand reveals his orders, written down on a piece of paper, that their mission is so important that if men are wounded, they are to be left behind. Now it really makes no sense.

It gets worse. When Brand tells Leith to stay behind with the wounded, a soldier suggests making stretchers to carry them. Leith dismisses the idea, saying that the men would bleed to death in an hour. Sounds good to me. If they have scruples about leaving the men behind, carry them in stretchers for an hour, and then when they die, leave them in the desert. Instead, Leith stays behind with the wounded, and then, after everyone is gone, kills them. Actually, he only kills one of them, because he runs out of bullets. So then he decides to carry the other wounded man all by himself. You see, carrying a wounded man on a stretcher is a bad idea, but tossing him over your shoulder and staggering through the desert is a good idea. Conveniently, the man dies, and Leith is able to catch up with the rest of the men.

External logic to the rescue. The purpose of all this absurdity is to establish that Brand wanted Leith to kill the wounded for him, and then hold him responsible for doing so. That would be fine, if that could have been established coherently. But since internal logic fails us here, we have to reach for the director’s motivations instead.

After a while, the men run out of water. They come across a well, but before anyone takes a drink, someone suggests that the Germans may have poisoned it. The men put pressure on Brand to sample the water to see if it is safe to drink.  Rather than show fear, he takes a swig. It tastes all right, but Leith says it is too soon to tell. So, they leave the well without drinking any of the water. But if they were not going to drink the water regardless of what happened when Brand swallowed some, what was the point of Brand’s risking his life by drinking some of it in the first place? This contrivance can only be explained by Ray’s desire to show how Brand can be intimidated by his fear that others may think him a coward.

When Brand sees a scorpion crawling near Leith’s leg during a rest period, he does not warn Leith, hoping that Leith will be bitten. Mekrane (Raymond Pellegrin) sees the scorpion too, but does nothing. After Leith is bitten, Mekrane tries to kill Brand for letting the scorpion bite Leith. But if Mekrane cares so much about Leith, why didn’t he just walk over to the scorpion and step on it?

Finally, before Leith dies, he asks Brand to tell Jane that she was right and he was wrong. Instead, when Brand gets back to England, he tells Jane he did not hear what Leith said, but he probably said that he loved her. We know Brand is the sort who would lie about such a thing, but why this particular lie? As with the scorpion scene, I don’t think even external logic can make sense of this one.

If the movie is so illogical that not even external logic can make sense of some of it, we have to ask ourselves why film critics waste any time on it at all.  Now it is metalogic to the rescue.  Nicholas Ray is one of those directors that a lot of critics regard as an auteur, which means that all his movies will receive attention no matter how bad they are.