Johnny Got His Gun (1971)

Sick Product of a Sick System

Lack of good storyline.

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

. . . back in the 1950s because millionaires with guns are the most dangerous things in this world. Dalton Trumbo wrote JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN to warn America of the incipient Paddock Bannon Party (also frequently referred to as the Repug Party or the GOOPERS). Trumbo pictures former True Blue American Union Chief Johnny Wayne (nee Marion Mitchell Morrison, who became the self-proclaimed "Il Duce") with both legs, both arms, both eyeballs, both balls, and so forth blown off. Trumbo is saying with JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN that such emasculating total mutilation is what happens to a Man's immortal soul when he defects from the side of We True Blue Normal Average Loyal Patriotic Progressive Silent Majority 99 Per Center Union Label Citizens to throw in his lot with the Basket of Deplorable Corrupt Job-Killing Red Commie "Conservative" Capitalist Polluting Plunderer Class. Dalton knew that Wayne played a series of Robin Hood-like People's Champions during the 1930s before becoming a minion of Satanic Arch Demon John Ford. JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN Allegorizes what will become of America once the Racist Public Enemies such as Steve Paddock and Steve Bannon begin to "cull" We the American Masses. While "high roller" casino lizard gun nuts such as Paddock begin to machine-gun us away by the hundreds, this will merely be a sideshow fiendishly designed to distract us from the Main Threat to our Well-Being: casino lizards such as Steve Bannon and Don Juan Rump yanking away our Medicare, Food Stamps, Social Security, Veteran's Benefits, Medicaid, Planned Parenthood, Government Pensions, ObamaCare, National Parks, Health Inspectors, Job Safety Enforcers, Union Committee People, and so forth to kill us off by the millions! Jesus Christ Himself might as well be pictured at the controls of a runaway freight train mangling the Bodies of We the People, Dalton shows us with JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN, since all the so-called "Christians" of the USA are in league with the Devil! Tragically, America did not heed the lessons of JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN, allowing Wayne and his henchman Ward Bond--a fellow Ford "Stock Company" imp--to ride their Harleys up and down Hollywood Boulevard late into the night, clubbing any neatly dressed pedestrians for being gay (like Il Duce and Bond were Canadians bashing baby seals!). When America continued to honor Wayne and his ilk EVEN AFTER the release of JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN, it became inevitable that crass millionaires and billionaires such as Il Duce, Rump, Bannon, and Paddock would soon be gunning for us both LITERALLY (as in Las Vegas with Paddock) and, even more threateningly, with the ill-gotten wealth they've stolen from us to produce record levels of Well-Being Inequality, with Rump, Bannon and company now looting the U.S. Treasury and funneling half of it to the Kremlin! If YOU don't want to join JOHNNY in His Living Grave, Trumbo tells us, you MUST join the movement to declare the Paddock Bannon Rump Repugs as the Public Enemies they are, strip them of their citizenship on the grounds of High Treason, use their stolen wealth to pay off the National Debt they ran up, and deport them as Traitors to Antarctica's Larsen Ice Shelf B (the only continent that will take them)!

This film is almost hard to talk about. The Dalton Trumbo novel involves a man who has been dismantled in war. He is just a trunk and a head, with his body hanging on. He still has his sexual organs. He is immobile, of course, and dependent for everything on his caretakers. One young woman, a nurse, take pity on him and gives him a sexual experience. LIke any of us, he has dreams, but he is unable to express them to anyone. He needs stimulation but is kept in a dark room and approached on rare occasions. If there is a true nightmare, this would be it. The most devastating thing is that he is really young and will probably live a long time. We are kept involved with his thoughts through a kind of personal narration. It may be the saddest film I've ever seen.

Having watched this i again feel almost blessed that i have never had to face the hell that must be a battlefield. Having debated the legitimacy of war many times with ardent pacifists i believe the jury is still out. What this film masterfully achieves is the distillation of one mans life through his memories after having his body obliterated at the end of the First World War. To single out one soul from the millions who perished simplifies the conflict and yet this is what makes the movie all the more powerful. Joes memories become more surreal as the story progresses and also display an increasing level of macabre black humour. In contrast the parallel story of his life in the hospital bed as a limbless faceless living corpse (eerily shot in black and white) shows him make "progress" eventually being able to communicate by morse to the hospital staff. The movie ends sadly with Joe realising the full extent of his predicament and all hope is lost. The surreal nature of some of the movie dream scenes and the effective use of black and white film pre dates cinematic styles later used by the likes of David Lynch and Dennis Potter.

This wrenching tale about a basket case in which a young American soldier named Johnny -Timothy Bottoms - is hit by a bomb on the last days of the WWI . The story takes place in the mind of a quadruple amputee who has also lost his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. As the deaf and dumb Joe is limbless , faceless and confined to a semi-existence and he attempts to communicate with the staff -Edward Franz- and caretakers . Regaining consciousness, 20 and some year-old Joe Bonham slowly learns that while his brain is healthy and able to reason, the rest of his body is irreparably shattered, leaving him forever tied within the confines of his own imagination. Regarded as a vegetable and stuck in a light-less hospital utility room , he fantasizes and dreams about life before and after the artillery shell . He struggles valiantly to find some way to communicate with the outside world . Tapping his head on the pillow in Morse code he breaks through and pleads with his nurse -Diane Varsi- to be put on display as a living example of the cost of war.The black-listed Trumbo adapted his own novel, seemingly unfilmable , incredibly based on real events , approximately thirty years after he wrote it and shot at the climax of the Vietnam era . The picture is often sentimental, sometimes thought-provoking as well as terrifying . It is developed through a sustained interior monologue on a series of flashbacks to Johnny's infancy , his first and only night with his love interest -performed by Kathy Fields- , before leaving for the front , his employment in the local bakery and his relationship to his father- Jason Robards- and Christ well played by Donad Sutherland , including some breathtaking images in a train. The flick terminates captioning the following : ¨ War dead since 1914 : over 80.000.000 , missing or mutilated : over 150.000.000¨ . ¨ Dulce et decorum est pro Patria Mori ¨. The movie deservedly won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes 71 . This morbid anti-war and pro-euthanasia diatribe is very good film though a little bit boring , talky and depressing. It's recently remade (2008) in a special version by Rowan Joseph with Ben MacKenzie as Johnny .