Hollywood Fights The Facts
While not specifically a war movie, BRAVEHEART was financed by an American born, Australian actor and made in Ireland. A tale of the fight for Scottish freedom, the film was written by an American and produced by an American.
The same is true of SPR. When asked why there were no British sailors on the boats delivering the Rangers to Pont du Hoc, Steve Ambrose replied, "You don't see any craft, and you don't see any of Omaha beach either. You see where Spielberg chose to shoot it, in Ireland. It's Hollywood, it's not a documentary and it's more accurate than any other movie that's come out of Hollywood."
Basically the British argument runs as Jeffery Walsh, a Manchester Metropolitan University academic describes, "These films need to be treated with a considerable amount of scepticism (sic) and caution. Exploring American myths and narratives is more important to them than historical fact." Alf Louvre, who co-wrote Tell Me Lies About Vietnam with Mr. Walsh, agrees with this argument. He follows with, "The glut of World War II films is part of an attempt to overcome the unique defeat in Vietnam. They have re-invented the notion of the heroic American which that war put on ice for a long time. In the past 25 years American soldiers have been portrayed as deeply troubled or even psychotic."
Somehow this argument all sounds familiar. If you read my Suite101 - Military Movies article "And The Truth Shall Set You Free [http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/mili..." I quoted Dr. Lawrence Sid of the Center for Defense Information "TOP GUN also in large measure, in my view, prepared the American people for the Gulf War. Before the completion of the rehabilitation, the American people had more or less decided the United States military couldn't do what it said it could do. TOP GUN showed that we could shoot down airplanes, that our aircraft carriers could go anyplace, and that our pilots were the best. And so, when the Gulf War comes along, there's no reason for any American civilian to believe that we can't beat Sadism Hussein."
I replied that his statement lacked elemental logic. My guess is that Dr. Suid missed out on the billions of dollars spent on the training of millions of U.S. soldiers for forty years to fight and win a conventional war in an European environment against a Soviet trained foe. Trade Europe for the open desert and you get a
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