40/50x2: Platoon

This film has one of the most robust casts I have seen in a long time.

Platoon follows Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen) as he drops out of college and volunteers to fight in Vietnam. He is dropped near the Cambodian border and immediately is thrust into combat.

Exhaustion overcomes him one night while he is supposed to standing watch. He asks another soldier to take over for him and he falls asleep - but so does the soldier who has taken over for him. And, the enemy is able to sneak up on them and ambushes them.

Taylor is yelled at by Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berenger), but he is taken under the wing of Sgt. Elias (Willem Dafoe), who doesn't get along with the more crazed Barnes.

The film follows Taylor through his experiences and also shows the other troops and how they are dealing with the war. Some are able to handle it, while others show the effects of war and each one deals with it in a different way.

The movie itself was decent, but not the greatest of war movies I have seen. Still, it was pretty much non-stop action, and the characters were very interesting.

It was also cool to see some of the bigger stars of the day like Johnny Depp, Forest Whitaker, John C. McGinley, Kevin Dillon and Keith David - some of which were very young and had very small roles.

Overall, enjoyable. And with most war films coming in rather long, here it is just two hours, which was nice. The ending of the film was also pretty powerful - something I was not expecting, but also understood.

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29/50x2: Eight Men Out

I had heard about this scandal for years, and it is sort of depicted in a small way in Field of Dreams but here we get an entire movie about it.

Warning: Filled with spoilers, obviously.

In 1919 the Chicago White Sox were quite possibly the greatest baseball team ever assembled, especially at that point in time. Eight Men Out shows that some of the players on the team agree to fix the World Series of that year and allow the Cincinnati Reds to win in order to make extra money.

The team is owned by Charles Comiskey (Clifton James), who is notoriously cheap when it comes to his players and rewarding them for their strong play. A few gambling men, Arnold Rothstein (Michael Lerner) and Bill Burns (Christopher Lloyd), agree to pay a few of the players more than they would make if they won the World Series to throw it - and thus the fix was in.

Star, but aging, pitcher Eddie Cicotte (David Stratharn) agrees to the fix and, although he had won 29 games during the year, loses his first two starts of the World Series. Other players like Lefty Williams (James Read), Swede Risberg (Don Harvey), Hap Felsch (Charlie Sheen) and Chick Gandil (Michael Rooker) are also along with the fix.

Cicotte's mind was easily made up after he was benched for rest the final two weeks of the season upon winning his 29th game. Cicotte had a clause in his contract that would have awarded him $10,000 if he won 30 games, but Comiskey ordered him to sit and thus allowing him not to pay Cicotte the bonus.

But, eight men in all are said to be included in the scam, including Buck Weaver (John Cusack) and Shoeless Joe Jackson (D.B. Sweeney). The White Sox lose the series to the Reds, five game to three, and at the conclusion the newspaper reveals that the series may not have been played on the level - thus beginning a search of the team and an eventual trial.

Players Williams and Cicotte sign confessions, and Jackson signs one as well despite not knowing what he was signing due to his inability to read. Weaver, however, maintains that he was never in on the fix and all of the players fight the accusations.

Though found not guilty the eight players are banned from ever playing professional baseball again. Weaver, though, continued to fight for his reinstatement up to his death in 1956.

This was an interesting telling of the story, one that obviously has many different points and sides to it. This story points to Comiskey as the villain - and we all know that despite their large salaries the real money makers in professional sports continue to be the owners.

The story mostly focuses on Weaver and Cicotte with a bit of Jackson and his homelife thrown in as well. The others that are part of the scandal are mostly window dressing, though we see players like Gandil being one of the main ringleaders.

I am not 100 percent sure how accurate the portrayals are of the athletes, but I found it interesting that Jackson was unable to read and really played up to be a simple person who really just loved playing baseball and that was all that he knew - and because of that was taken advantage of in situations.

It was a very fascinating depiction, though we don't really get an answer to the tale - but that isn't the filmmakers fault, because honestly there is no true answer. We do know that some of the players were in on the fix, but how many and who will always be a mystery.

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1/50: Red Dawn

At the beginning of the year I pledged that I would do my best to watch 50 films I had not seen during the coming year. I once thought this would be a difficult task, but I have already knocked out almost 10 of those movies and it isn't even the end of January. So, I decided to add another 50 to that list - but I must first finish the original 50.

So, the first film of the year that I watched from the list was Red Dawn.

Red Dawn came out in 1984 when I was just three years old, and for some reason (like many of the films on the list) I just never got around to watching it. I had the basic premise down, but I didn't know exactly how things played out.

Let me say, they wasted no time getting to the plot of the film. Not five minutes in and the small town is being attacked by Soviet/Cuban military.

A group of friends led by brothers, Jed (Patrick Swayze) and Matt (Charlie Sheen) find their way to the woods to try and wait out the attack. What they thought would be a few days begins to turn into months - fearing he worst the brothers and Robert (C. Thomas Howell) head back into town to see what is going on. The Soviet/Cuban military has taken over and tossed anyone who owned a gun into a prison, including Jed and Matt's father.

As they head back to their hideout, the group stops at a family friends house for food and shelter - only to be asked to take care of the family's granddaughters, Erica (Lea Thompson) and Toni (Jennifer Grey).

Realizing now that they are all on their own, the young group decides to become a militia - calling themselves 'Wolverines'. They end up being joined by a member of the US military whose plane is shot down, Andrew Tanner (Powers Boothe). Together, they take it upon themselves to take out as many of the Soviet/Cuban forces as possible.

I hear that this film is being remade, which is going to be very difficult. It is hard to believe that even in 1984 military forces could land in a small town undetected - but not in 2011. Plus, the group of kids had no communication to the outside world except a small radio - do you really think nowadays that none of the kids would have a cellphone on them?

I thought it was a pretty decent film. Weird to see a young Patrick Swayze and an even younger Charlie Sheen. Funny to see C. Thomas Howell's character go a little crazy and blood thirsty. And, weird to see so many of these characters in an action/war movie when we are used to them in romantic comedies.

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