M.A.S.H.

1970 war comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Army surgeons Hawkeye, Duke, and Trapper John raise hell at a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War. In between brilliant surgical work, they challenge the bureaucracy and dream up various ways to deal with the horrors of war.

One of those movies where the faults (i.e. an abrupt ending, too many characters, pointlessly episodic plotless structure, dialogue you can't quite pick up) are what makes the movie great. I don't think Altman's style quite gels as much here as it will in later movies (from Nashville to A Prairie Home Companion), but the experimental direction still makes the movie worth watching on its own. Altman's use of close-ups that don't look like close-ups and whatever he does to give the picture a bleak gritty look is successful, but the trademark use of the overlapping dialogue works only some of the time. It's hard not to love the black humor and complete irreverence as sacred cows are stomped upon, and it's great to see a war movie in which there's not a single shot of a war shown. The closest is a football game at the end involving both sides trying to cheat their way to victory. A metaphor? The football scene also shows the only gun shot in the entire movie. Was this, as I've read, the first major film to use the f-word? If so, I'd be forced to bump up the rating by a point. This came out the same year as the almost equally irreverent Catch-22. I haven't seen that in a while, but it seems like there are more than a few similarities between the two films. Dr. Strangelove, too?

Here I am watching the movie: