What did you think of Between Heaven and Hell? I thought the latter part of the film had a good story to tell and the trail and bush fire fights were extremely well done.
I like
Between Heaven and Hell because watching Broderick Crawford chew the scenery always interests me and this is one of his most off-the-wall roles, which is saying a mouthful! I also liked his two hopped-up bodyguards with the homosexual undertones, which was pretty daring for a film years before don't ask-don't tell. But mostly I like the film because it underlines something I learned as an enlistedman in the Army--those damn officers will get you killed if you aren't careful!!!
I'm not sure what people see in The Red Badge of Courage I love Huston but this didn't work for me.
Well, as I recall, the film follows the book pretty closely and I like the fact that Hollywood resisted giving all the characters names and instead stuck with the book's identification of the young soldier, the loud soldier, the happy soldier, etc. But the main thing I like about the film is that its depiction of battle is probably the most accurate of any film ever. Again I'm drawing on my own Army experience in this: I've never been in a battle myself, but I've been in lots of simulated battles, and the thing that always impressed me is that it's hard as hell to figure out what is going on! You hear gunfire, but where is it coming from? Is it friend or foe? In basic training when I was serving as an acting corporal in charge of an 8-man rifle squad, I was assigned one time to take my bunch up a wooded hillside in an imitation battle. At the foot of the hill, we could hear firing but couldn't see anyone or anything. Five steps into the trees, and I lost my whole squad! A simulated artillery round went off near me and when I wiped the dirt out of my eyes, not one of those boys were around sight! You couldn't find a jumping jackass in those woods. I didn't see them again until the exercise was over.
The movie was right on when after the battle as two different groups of infantry come together, one says to the other, "You should have been here, this was where the real fighting was." And the other replies, "Nothing of the sort! The real attack came right at us down there by the river."
The truth being that each soldier sees only a small part of the battle that he's closest to, and it always seems like the biggest fight ever, owning to a large part to all the confusion.
Certainly Red Badge of Courage is not your normal war film, but it works for me because it's so realistic. Plus you have Audie Murphy, the most decorated hero of World War II, playing a coward. The loud soldier is played by Bill Mauldin, also a WWII rifleman who drew the famous Willie and Joe cartoons for Yank magazine.