COURAGE UNDER FIRE
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Denzel Washington, Meg Ryan, Lou Diamond Phillips, Michael Moriarty, Matt Damon, Scott Glenn. Screenplay: Patrick Sheane Duncan. Director: Edward Zwick. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Akira Kurosawa's classic film RASHOMON may be the definitive cinematic text for film critics, because no film may work better at keeping us honest. The story of an assault seen through the eyes of four different individuals is about the subjectivity of reality, how perception creates "truth," and every time I think about RASHOMON it makes me structure my arguments with care, and with an eye to my own subjectivity. I was thinking about RASHOMON quite a bit as I watched COURAGE UNDER FIRE, and not just because it is about conflicting accounts of a single event. Throughout the film, I found my perspective shifting, my opinion rising and falling to the point where I realized that I was responding to COURAGE UNDER FIRE in pieces, and not as a whole.
That response was at least in part the result of the kind of film COURAGE UNDER FIRE is, the kind of ambitious, sprawling drama which director Edward Zwick (GLORY, LEGENDS OF THE FALL) has favored since his television days as co-creator of "thirtysomething." It is the story of Lt. Col. Nat Serling (Denzel Washington), a tank commander in the Gulf War who, in the middle of a confusing night battle, gives an order to fire which results in the destruction of a friendly tank, and the death of a close friend. Serling is re-assigned to the Pentagon, where he is given the task of investigating a posthumous candidate for the Medal of Honor -- Capt. Karen Walden (Meg Ryan), the first woman ever nominated for the award. The story is that helicopter pilot Walden led a rescue mission which saved several lives, but that story is an inconsistent one. Serling's interviews with Walden's crew lead to more questions than answers in a quest for an evasive truth.
Reaction #1: Edward Zwick is turning into a marvelous director of battle scenes. In GLORY, LEGENDS, and now in COURAGE UNDER FIRE, he captures the feel of war with a chaotic poetry, vistas of destruction which are nevertheless spectacular to behold. Perhaps more impressive, Zwick has accomplished something that the news was never able to accomplish, namely to drive home the fact that the Gulf War was not a video game or a casual police activity like rousting a wino off a park bench with a baton. It was a war, and COURAGE UNDER FIRE does justice to the sacrifices of its participants.
Reaction #2: Patrick Sheane Duncan over-loaded his screenplay. For a very long time, it is not clear what COURAGE UNDER FIRE is really about. Is it a war-time tale of the terrors of the trenches? Is it a domestic drama focusing on Serling's profound guilt over his actions in the Gulf and his inability to re-connect with his family? Is it an attack on the inability of the military, and by extension the nation, to own up to its mistakes? Is it a sort of mystery, where the real story of Walden's actions will provide the payoff? It takes forever for Duncan to clarify what all of these stories have to do with one another, but by then they don't provide the layers of emotional resonance he was aiming for; mainly, they provide confusion. There are too many conflicts in COURAGE UNDER FIRE, blunting the impact of the one which should have stirred the audience.
Reaction #3: Meg Ryan really does have some dramatic chops. In previous serious efforts like WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN and RESTORATION, I found it difficult to buy Ryan in a role which strayed from her quirky comic ingenues. COURAGE UNDER FIRE is an even greater challenge, because she isn't playing only one Karen Walden; she is playing Karen Walden as she is described in each individual soldier's story. She appears only in flashback, and her character develops only as Serling learns more about her, but she is nevertheless a powerful presence in the film.
Reaction #4: Denzel Washington has his limits. Washington is a tremendous actor, and he does some excellent work in COURAGE UNDER FIRE, but there are moments when the intelligence and confidence he almost always projects just don't seem appropriate. Serling has moments of real despair and confusion, and Washington doesn't always bring those qualities across.
Reaction #5: COURAGE UNDER FIRE comes through with an emotional conclusion, and features some great supporting performances (particularly Matt Damon as the medic in Walden's crew). It is the kind of film which satisfies even as it leaves you suspecting that the scope should have been narrowed. COURAGE UNDER FIRE is a film which looks better from the back than the front, and a bit thick around the middle -- it's a different experience from different angles.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 RASHOMONs to judgment: 7.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~srenshaw
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