Patton (1970)

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Patton is a very rich and engrossing biological film about General Patton. It is more of a character study of the man than a film about WW2 and George C Scott delivers an incredible performance that won him an Oscar. The film holds up well through the years and looks and sounds amazing. The script was very edgy and original at the time and elevated the status of up and coming film maker Francis Ford Coppola, who also received an Oscar for his work on the screenplay. While the approach to the subject matter was fresh and original, it has much in common with much of the other WW2 films that came before it. What is most interesting is the complicated layers to General Patton as a man and George C Scott delivered an amazing performance. Overall, the film Patton is very classy and very well made production that was both commercially and critically successful. A classic film that deserves the acclaim it has received.

RELEASED IN 1970 and directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, "Patton" stars George C. Scott as the charismatic general during his WWII campaigns in North Africa and Sicily, as well as France & Germany following the Normandy invasion. After the invasion of Sicily, Patton was reprimanded for slapping a cowardly soldier suffering battle fatigue (in real life it was two soldiers on separate occasions in the course of eight days in August, 1943). The fiery general was removed from command for eleven months while his junior in age and rank, Omar Bradley (Karl Malden), was selected to command the First United States Army for the invasion of Normandy.Meanwhile, Patton was assigned to London as a decoy to deceive the Germans in a sham operation called Fortitude. The ruse was successful because the German High Command respected Patton more than any other Allied commander and deemed him crucial to any plan to invade mainland Europe. Immediately following the successful invasion, he was put in command of the Third Army in the final Allied thrust against Germany where the headstrong general, once again, proved his mettle as his forces favored speed and aggressive offensive action.Patton was an interesting character who maintained a flashy larger-than-life image in order to encourage his troops; and he didn't hesitate to get his hands dirty with them. While other officers tried to blend-in with the troops on the battlefield, Patton brazenly displayed his rank insignia. He was a romantic who valued bravery and tenacity above all. All this is effectively conveyed in this ambitious war flick. It's interesting to observe the North African and European theaters of the war from the standpoint of the Allied generals, mostly Patton and Bradley, rather than the typical perspective of the infantry.THE FILM WAS WRITTEN by Francis Ford Coppola with additional material from Edmund H. North (based on the factual accounts of Ladislas Farago & Omar N. Bradley). It runs 172 minutes and was shot in Spain, Algeria, Morocco, Crete and England, with the opening speech filmed at Bob Hope Patriotic Hall in Los Angeles.GRADE: A-

I sometimes grow weary of war movies. So many of them are a glorification of something that is about death and destruction. So often the victors in movies are glorified but we don't get a picture of the victims. George Patton was a great general, which also meant that he gave his life to war and all its implications. Soldiers are his pawns to him. Winning in battle is the only thing, no matter what the cost. I remember the line about dying for your country--the idea is to get the other poor son of a bitch to die for his country. I look upon this as the worst of human ideology. So how can I give this a 10? It's because George C. Scott becomes Patton, with all his bluster and arrogance. This is one of the best performance ever by an actor in any film. When I see Scott standing in front of the flag, I think I am watching Patton himself. There is also the fact that he is not seen as some sort of Hollywood creation. He is there, warts and all. I love this movie.

Again, there are good and bad war movies. This one is rather poor. Seems to be, all the elements of a great war movie are here - stellar cast, great camera work, excellent and meticulous approach to details and superb music. Why does it then fall flat? The mere idea is nothing new - a bio of a great war general, this time, Patton, throughout his ordeals and victories in Africa and then Italy and then France. Yeah, but no. The false tone is set up at the very first, long, laughable and totally unnecessary speech scene that does all the wrong service and only makes the tonality of the film pretentious and suddenly comic. Battle scenes - there are several. But a very sloppy montage and abrupt character add to a bigger misery. Even the man himself seems to be all at odds with the whole thing. The worst is yet to come with typically awful depiction of Russians. More to say here is only to induce laughter. So silly the whole scene is. The best is all of a sudden is a very delicate and deeper take on Germans - Jodl, Rommel, Steiger are all very decent and highly deliverable antagonists with their hopes and falls. That does not save these unimaginably long 3 hours of a plodding mess from a yawning boredom.