COURAGE UNDER FIRE
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1996 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: A Medal of Honor investigation of an
incident in the Persian Gulf War turns up
contradictory accounts of what really happened.
Denzel Washington plays the chosen investigator,
still haunted by his own error judgment error in a
different action of the same war. He is determined
to find the truth about an incident that got a
woman Medivac pilot killed and for which she may be
given a the country's highest award. Patrick
Sheane Duncan's script is by turns intelligent,
powerful, and badly flawed. Rating: high +1 (-4 to
+4)
COURAGE UNDER FIRE has been compared to Akira Kurosawa's RASHOMON, as I suppose any film with contradictory flashbacks is likely to be. But RASHOMON had more respect for its audience. The classic Japanese film said that the truth cannot be determined by talking to people after the fact and, in fact, that the truth may no longer exist after the fact. COURAGE UNDER FIRE is not so intelligent a film and feels the need to tie everything up for the viewer. In the end of COURAGE UNDER FIRE you know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. And it is not hard to guess well before the end. It treats itself asa mystery film, sort of a courtroom drama without the courtroom, with a not-too-surprising solution revealed at the end.
Lt. Colonel Nathaniel Serling (Denzel Washington) was an armored tank commander in the Persian Gulf War. In the action of battle he makes a split-second decision and accidentally kills several of his own men. He unwillingly takes part in an Army cover-up of the incident which would make both him and the Army look bad and he is given a desk job at the Pentagon. Meanwhile the Army is considering awarding the Medal of Honor posthumously to Captain Karen Walden (Meg Ryan). Serling has only to write a superficial report on the events surrounding Walden's heroism and death following the crash of the Red Cross helicopter she was flying. But Serling notes that there is contradictory information in the reports of the people who witnessed Walden's death and decides that it has to be cleared up before he is willing to file his report. He conducts his investigation under pressure to conclude from his commander (Michael Moriarty) and a slimy Whitehouse aide (Bronson Pinchot). He must sift through accounts and try to determine the truth.
Edward Zwick directs Denzel Washington for the second time here, having previously directed GLORY. Zwick has a feel for creating vivid battle scenes with a believable high-speed pacing and a certain chaos. It is rare to find such a combination of thoughtful scripting with action scenes. Patrick Sheane Duncan's script walks a careful tightrope being neither greatly pro-military nor anti-military. In a sense it is a film with a respect for heroes, but at the same time does not minimize the horror of battle. It is respectful of the Medal of Honor, but at the same time has ironic scenes of soldiers praying together before battle and concluding with "Let's kill 'em all." Through much of the film he and director Zwick seem to maintain a careful control of the style, then in the final third that control starts to fail. A gratuitous (non-battle) action scene is used for some unneeded visual excitement toward the end of the film. Then it all ends with a slightly too perfect conclusion and a sequence of scenes that are both cliched and overly sentimental. It is a bad faltering for a film that had done reasonably well up to that point. Also, it is disappointing to see a director of Zwick's stature using fairly blatant product placements.
Denzel Washington has been playing well-balanced and in-control characters for quite a while and it is nice to see him playing a man with some serious emotional problems. In fact, he is by far not the only character who tries to hide a troubled core under an expression of composure. Matt Damon is particularly good as Ilario whose affable manner does not quite hide a tense emotional core. This is a good role for Meg Ryan and calling on talents that she has not shown before, but though her character hangs over the whole film, she is given star billing for what is really not much more than a supporting role. Lou Diamond Phillips plays a somewhat two-dimensional character, Monfriez and he does little to make the character memorable.
COURAGE UNDER FIRE offers some very good action battle scenes and a somewhat engaging mystery. But it has only one really well-developed character and its mystery is not solved by clever deduction so much as by asking witnesses what happened long enough until the truth comes out. Still, when the film waves its flag for wartime heroes, it is hard not to salute. The film rates a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
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