Word: marvinism
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...tries to twist a number of other cliches of the was movie but it starts with a basic formula: a tough, leathery sergeant (Lee Marvin) who survived The First War returns to Europe leading a pack of good but green recruits against Hitler's huns. Mark Hamill is the soft-spoken hero with a streak of cowardice. Bobby DiCicco is the eyetalian who wants to open a bagel shop when he gets home. Kelly Ward is the quiet cartoonist who draws pictures when he's not drawing fire. And Robert Carradine is Sam Fuller, a scruffy, fast-talking writer from...
...they're known as the Four Horsemen) and they move through every campaign in the Second World War--North Africa, Sicily, Normandy, Belgium, and finally a mop-up of the Eastern Front--without a scratch. While the wetnose replacements who join them for each campaign get shot to pieces, Marvin and his gang survive with a magical invincibility...
...somehow more accessible than the Vietnam War as portrayed in Apocalypse Now and even more personal than the achingly personal story of The Deer Hunter. There are good guys and bad guys and there is a line, however thin, between killing and murdering. Through the entire war, Marvin and his men stubbornly survive, eerily recalling the words of Coppola's Colonel Kilgore: "Someday, this war's gonna...
...Marvin's performance is the best in a film full of good actors. He may be playing the hardened sergeant for the umpteenth time but his heart is finally in it. With his rumbling voice, he tosses off dialogue that a lesser actor would choke on. The paternal affection he bears his men never conflicts with his silent passion for killing the enemy and getting through the war alive. Hamill and the others are also nearly perfect--Carradine stands out because he has all the best lines--and Fuller leaves us wishing we knew more about his young heroes...
...remembered around the bookmobile, used to have a fine depot. It used to have a high school, a tavern, a cattle market, a drugstore and soda fountain. It used to have a hardware store, its own doctor, even a dentist. It used to have a barber shop, a newspaper. Marvin Neff, 74, and his wife Lucy, 70, treasure some old sepia postcards that prove Claypool even had a handsome elevated bandstand, center block on Main Street, where brass-band concerts were given every Saturday night. Another card shows an attractive little commercial hotel. "The Shipley Hotel was right there," Neff...