magnuspy

What promise this movie had! Steve Martin gives a tour-de-force performance, perhaps the best of his career in a role where he was tragically let-down by his co-stars. The story fairly meanders for most of the first half, before picking up steam and ending in a climax that packs one of the most heavy emotional punches I've seen in any film.

The person who 'cast' this movie should be drummed out of the industry. The supporting roles were filled by B-actors whose wooden performances deflated many a key scene. Debra Winger was particularly awful in this one, reciting her lines robotically without any realism whatever; I've seen middle school plays which were more convincing than some of her scenes.

However, I still recommend watching this movie for the last 15 minutes that held up in spite of Winger. Contrary to popular belief, this is not an anti-Christian movie at all, indeed, it is quite the opposite.

If you have not grown up playing video games, it might be a bit hard to sit through this movie. The director(s) of this trilogy adopted a technique of mounting the camera on a sort of tuning fork which vibrates with an amplitude & frequency proportional to the intensity of the action on the scene at any given point of time. It starts out OK with 'Identity' and maxes out in 'Ultimatum'. At the end of the third movie, I felt that I had just sat through a period of turbulence on an airplane and threw my guts up in the multiplex restroom.

However, the movies themselves are tightly plotted and enjoyable, and Matt Damon's performance is awesome in all three. What a pity they had to ruin it with the shaky-cam. If some enterprising soul finds a way to strip out the shaking, I'll pay money to buy the trilogy on DVD.

Taken by itself, this is a wonderful movie with a compelling plot, wonderful characters played by talented actors and a balls-out performance by Gary Sinise, who in my opinion deserved the Oscar more than Tom Hanks. It is really an emotional roller-coaster of a movie that people of all ages can enjoy.

However, I'm rather conflicted about the sneaky the way the movie turns the truth inside out in pursuit of its aims. In the world of 'Forrest Gump', the Vietnam War was a just endeavor and its protesters were all drugged out, cowardly, sleazy hippies who turn innocent American farm girls into dope-dependent sluts. The social fervor of the sixties is presented as an irrational mania, and conservative norms are uncritically celebrated. The way this movie has been embraced by the hard-core right wing really creeps me out.

Still, this is one movie where the 'Willing Suspension of Disbelief' can reap big dividends.