quote:

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I wish I could do that.

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If you take the same pills as Alice, you can

Johnny Got His Gun

See it, people!

forsaken productions, saving private ryan was very accurate. as far as the war against japan, catch windtalkers and the thin red line. red line i watched last night. great movie. if you like action and explosions, windtalker is for you. It doesnt have an emotionally stirring story, as most good war movies do, but extremely accurate stuff. Almost surpasses saving ryan on that one. the only complaint I have about either one is reloading. Windtalkers- they never seem to run out of ammo, except when a major part of the plot comes into play.
ex.- the guy is going around, killing japs, and comes across one of the other main characters being captured by the japs. goes to shoot the japs and......click...woops. guess he's out of ammo..oh well, too bad for the other character. the other guy is to be killed because he ran out of ammo at that exact moment.
its almost frustrating because its obvious that they set it up that way.
Saving Private ryan-reload way too much. it seems every time the camera pans to another character, their putting another clip in their gun. no way they couldve spent all their ammo, they havent shot at anybody!
but as far as uniforms, tactics, and weapons go, those two movies are pretty accurate.

Yeah, like I said, I don't know much about that part. I imagine Private Ryan is really accurate.

But you got to remember, clips bakc in WWII were REALLY small, not like today.

spielberg, the director of saving ryan, his dad was a veteran in Burma during ww2, and he had military advisors and veterans help him on the representations of the uniforms and weapons, so thats probably as accurate as you can get.

yeah guns don't hold all that much ammo, the M1 Garand, which was the basic rifle that was used in WWII, was semi-automatic and only held 8 rounds. It's not going to take that long to fire 8 rounds, expecially when you're getting shot at. The BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) only held 20 rounds, and it's full auto. That's really not gonna take long to unload.

What directors that are interested in doing realistic war movies need to do is COUNT THE SHOTS. The blankfiring guns they used in SPR were usually real examples, so the ammo capacity would be the same (unless they had been rechambered for 9mm blanks or something). Of course, keeping track of how many shots had been fired in each shot is difficult, especially since they run many takes and it isn't known until post which will be used.

As far as good war films, I like ones that give an unconventional perspective:

Grave of the Fireflies
Kanal
No Man's Land
Das Boot
Black Hawk Down
The Battle of Algiers

I thought Saving Private Ryan was very good, but not a realistic/logically conceived story. It functioned well as a Hollywood war film, replete with flaws and lapses of logic that you'd expect, but it didn't make me think the war was actually happening like Black Hawk Down or Das Boot did.

the movie Downfall is out now, and it's one of the best war movies ever made