Director: Franklin J. Schaffner
Year Released: 1970
Rating: 2.5
Hollywood basically engages in Hero Worship, shows famed WWII General George S. Patton (played marvelously by George C. Scott) as arrogant but successful leader who believed he was a reincarnated warrior: he's even on God's Side, and after a prayer to Infinity, the weather turns in his favor. Screenwriters Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund North make an attempt to sneak critiques of Patton's diva-like attitude and disregard for caution (the 'slapping affair' is his personal low point in the movie), but between Schaffner's rah-rah approach, Omar Bradley's presence as military advisor and Scott's larger-than-life performance ('Americans hate to lose'), the movie becomes one long victory march. It's a clean, virtually bloodless affair (some 'bloody' makeup is used, but when bodies get shelled they more or less 'leap' to their deaths; it's like gymnastics) and wrapped in excessive confidence and a feeling of invincibility - precisely the kind of misaligned attitude that gets the American military stuck in places like Vietnam and in Iraq.
