Home » Film & TV » Military Movies » A Review of THE MUMMY from a military perspective

A Review of THE MUMMY from a military perspective

© John Lovett

WARNING: Spoilers for THE MUMMY

Let me get a couple of things straight from the beginning. Item one, I do not write movie reviews. Item two, I know THE MUMMY was not a military movie. Having said all that let me start.

The beginning of the movie has our hero, Brendan Fraser as a Foreign Legion Lieutenant, and his Foreign Legion band fighting off marauding Arab tribesmen. Here they are in Egypt, fighting off Arab tribesmen. Excuse me? Egypt? Egypt was a British protectorate until after World War II. This story takes place in the 1920s. Are the producers (Stephen Sommers and Patricia Carr) trying to tell us, the viewers, that these Legionnaires deserted their unit, marched across some thousand miles of open desert into British territory, and then engaged a group of Arabs. Yep, that is what they are telling us. There is a throw away line by Brendan Fraser somewhere in the first third of the film that his unit decided the desert and he just had to follow them. Huhh?

Also, the Fraser character is an American serving as an officer in the Legion. While the Legion did get some of its officers from the ranks, most of the officers were trained at the French military academy at St. Cyr. This means, of course, that they had to be French. This little element was overlooked in the film.

I'm going to survey a couple of other little points of interest. The weapons that the French carried were MAS rifles. I guess Stembridge came to the rescue. However, Fraser pulled out a Colt 1911 .45 caliber from his holster. I'm sure that the Legion used Browning Hi-Power pistols instead of Colts, but I'll let that slide.

However, there is one little tidbit for the producers. There was never any such thing as the Royal Air Corps. There was the Royal Flying Corps which was re-designated the Royal Air Force in 1916. It is interesting to note that the person who uttered the line with that misnomer was the noted British character actor Bernard Fox.

The little Stearman (I guess the British Royal Air Corps flew Stearmans) that our heros flew back into the desert had a cute little addition. The property master added a Lewis gun on the back end. Pretty cute little addition if you did not mind the fact that the gun never ejected any spent casings or the drum magazine never ran out of bullets.

The copyright of the article A Review of THE MUMMY from a military perspective in Military Movies is owned by John Lovett. Permission to republish A Review of THE MUMMY from a military perspective in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.