Ike: Countdown to D-Day (2004)

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

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

I tumbled to this one as part of a large pruning-out of a friend's DVD collection, and although this one won't be a keeper for my own library, it was still a worthwhile watch, if only for the novelty of Tom Selleck doing an extraordinary job of portraying Dwight D. Eisenhower.Mr. Selleck, to be totally honest, looks nothing like Eisenhower, even with his head and mustache shaved, but just as Gretchen Mol strutted her stuff to great effect in "The Notorious Bettie Page," Mr. Selleck rises to the occasion and embodies Ike with a remarkable verisimilitude that allows his audience to ignore the physical discrepancy. It is definitely one of Selleck's shining moments as an actor.The script has its problems, but this is no surprise in a talking heads story about the concerns of mounting the largest amphibious invasion in the history of warfare. Certain events are shuffled about and compressed temporally, some are created out of whole cloth, and a few seem to be egregious mistakes (cf. Ike's chat with troopers of the 101st Airborne on the wrong day), but mostly it's all in service of the story. Within the context of a two hour made-for-TV docu-drama, it works. Complaint can be made about the portrayal of various persons, notably General Patton, Field Marshall Montgomery, and Charles DeGaulle (whose nose isn't nearly big enough), but these are all minor lights orbiting the main star, Ike. If nothing else, the film properly leads one to further exploration of the events chronicled; there is a wealth of information out there, needless to say.Selleck really does a bang-up job, reining in his Magnum P.I. persona almost completely to portray a man who not only had the weight of the world on his shoulders, but also carried its very fate in his hands. I think Ike himself would have been pleased.

Not badly done, this story of the way Dwight D. Eisenhower managed to pull off the risky Normandy landings in 1944. It shows its low TV budget but I suppose we can do without still another majestic spectacle and settle for a little more in the way of a character study.Tom Selleck as Ike is surprisingly good. He's an unpretentious and likable guy, a hunk to women maybe but he seems to be accessible as a buddy too. That cracked voice maybe.Here he shrugs off his lackadaisical Magnum P. I. persona and does quite a good job of being Eisenhower, more adaptable than anyone might have thought. He's put on a few pounds for the role, had the hair shaved off his frontal area, and deepened his voice. There's another thing too. Eisenhower smoked like a volcano, and this is shown in the movie. He's constantly puffing away, as are many of the other characters. Smoking cigarettes wasn't the stigma then that it has now become. Butts were in your package of K rations, along with all-American chewing gum. The writers and producers were right to leave out some of Ike's pecadillos, like his affair with his aide, Kay Sommersby. There's no room for romance in this compact drama. But the smoking belongs. It's even used as a gag at Montgomery's expense, which I won't explain. It would have been tempting to drop all the cigarettes from the film and make it more PC. The film makers ought to be complimented on retaining them. The script of course doesn't give him any flaws. He's the hero after all. He never loses his temper. He doesn't browbeat anyone. Well, he DOES let his weather man, Stagg, have a couple of powerful jabs. He has doubts about the invasion schedule but not about himself. We see him doing one of the things Ike did best. He managed to pull together a team of disputatious colleagues and subordinates who were jealous of one another. (He did the same thing as president; he was like your nice uncle.) Every story has to have some sort of obstructionist. In this one it's Charles DeGaulle, who disapproves of Ike's plan and refuses to cooperate with the landings -- something that didn't happen in real life. He and Ike have an argument about who should make the announcement of the landings. It's left unresolved, an editorial imperfection. DeGaulle wasn't easy to work with. Winston Churchill remarked of him, "The heaviest cross I have to bear is the Cross of Lorraine." Selleck gets good support from the rest of the cast, whom we get to know fairly well. Especially neat is General Omar Bradley, even less pretentious than Ike. (Bradley is played by James Remar, whose name sounds as if it ought to mean something when spelled backwards, but it doesn't.) Man, you have to put these guys next to the pompous, prop-carrying MacArthur and his florid prose to appreciate their humility. Ike went on after the war to serve as president of Columbia University and was later elected president of the US for two terms. He was no more colorful as a politician than as a general, but he took us through eight years of the worst part of the Cold War, finally brought an end to the Korean conflict, and foresaw the rise of what he called "the military-industrial complex." A decent guy, and this is a pretty decent movie about a couple of extremely tense days in his life.

It's very difficult, for me, to understand those reviews that credit Selleck with a defining performance as Ike. His acting, intonation, enunciation, and body language were flat and unconvincing. Unless Ike was that dull himself, which does not seem to be the case, Selleck was a very disappointing casting choice.The main scenes that have stuck with me were the endless shots of Selleck lighting cigarettes and exhaling smoke during one-on-one encounters with Churchill and his staff members. Not since some of the early Nick Nolte films has anyone relied so much on empty gesture to compensate for a weak screen presence.But the film might be a must-see for history buffs. It reveals aspects of the invasion decision-making and execution process that, as far as I know, have not been adequately treated elsewhere.Just don't expect to come away from it inspired or feeling some connection with the Ike character. And you certainly won't come away impressed with the similarity that Selleck's interpretation bears to Eisenhower (as George C. Scott's did to Patton -- reportedly making even Patton's daughter forget she wasn't watching her father).

I swear you come off feeling more sympathy for the Germans than the French after seeing this. There are serious omissions and out of context statements that portray the French in every which way possible in a negative light. Its so obviously tainted by current politics (and I'm sure Tom Selleck's conservative politics) its not funny. The one time in the show where Churchill makes the off comment about the French trying to impede their escape from Dunkerque. As if they were collaborating with the Germans at the time... Totally out of context I cant believe Churchill would've made that comment to Ike at all. It was probably completely made up for the show. See the great BBC docu series "History of WW2" for the context.The admiral in charge of French forces in the area at the time wanted to stay in the fight. He expected the Brits to fulfill their obligations in their alliance at the time and not abandon the field of battle. He didn't understand they couldn't fight on probably because being an admiral vs a land force general didn't help in his understanding the Germans had far superior tactics and there was no point in keeping up the fight and risk the capture of 400 000 allied troops by the Germans. The motivation was honest though not one of a backstabbing nature. The French admiral saw cowardice in his eyes. And he felt betrayed and abandoned by his British allies.But also the fact the French had to threaten the closure of the port (tho they had no means of really doing it) if the Brits didn't evacuate them on a 50\50 basis is a sad statement on the British leadership far more than the French leadership at the time. In the last days of the Dunkerque evacuation 100 000 french soldiers held the line while the remaining 40 000 brits got first dibs off the continent. Hows that for "surrender monkeys"? I seriously hope Americans will get a chance to see the BBC series dramatized documentary "History of WW2" and get a truer picture of what really happened. So that unlike the sad distorted comment by the main comment posted for this picture and the awful Ike program they can really get an honest perspective of what happened.