Courage Under Fire (1996)
Directed by Edward Zwick
A US Army officer, who made a "friendly fire" mistake that was covered up, has been reassigned to a desk job. He is tasked to investigate a female chopper commander's worthiness to be awarded the Medal of Honor. At first all seems in order. But then he begins to notice inconsistencies between the testimonies of the witnesses...
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What critics compared Courage Under Fire to
But for my money, the most startling performance among many in “Short Term 12” comes from an unknown young actor named Keith Stanfield, whose haunting portrayal of a terrified 18-year-old about to age out of the home recalls Matt Damon’s similarly expressive breakout performance in “ Courage Under Fire .”
Pretenders to Cruise’s throne, Matthew McConaughey and Matt Damon, emerged with studies in the limits of machismo – respectively playing an arrested high-school playboy in Dazed and Confused , and a traumatised, opioid-addicted army medic in Courage Under Fire (which starred Meg Ryan, one of the Top Gun wives, as an army pilot being considered for the Medal of Honor).
The director, Edward Zwick ("Legends of the Fall," "Courage Under Fire," "Glory"), makes an admirable effort to combine a quiet, spiritual serenity with a harsh, worldly reality, and he almost succeeds.
Having already paid tribute to Kurosawa with his Rashomon-updating Courage Under Fire, Zwick creates an ode to the master with calls to duty, splendid battle sequences and a look by cinematographer John Toll (The Thin Red Line) that captures the period in a way that could be hung in an art museum and is impossible to look away from.
That being said, "The Last Samurai" is certainly Zwick's most accomplished film as a director, dwelling on many of the same cautionary themes of American militarism that have permeated his previous pictures ("Glory," "Legends of the Fall," "The Siege" and "Courage Under Fire") but finding a means to a more elegant narrative integration.
Director Edward Zwick has always impressed me with his ability to handle battlefield drama with such films as his epic “Glory” and more introspective “Courage Under Fire.”
Edward Zwick ("Glory"/"Courage Under Fire") efficiently directs within the studio system safe conduct code a predictable but rousing action epic destined to be a box office smash and nothing more.
A Stanley Kramer for our times, director Edward Zwick has spent much of his career raising social consciousness—about war (Glory, Courage Under Fire, Defiance), terrorism (The Siege), and human exploitation (Blood Diamond)—while lowering pulses.
Director Edward Zwick, who co-wrote the script with Charles Randolph and Marshall Herskovitz, is better known for testosterone-laden flicks with a martial bent (“Courage Under Fire,” “Glory”).
Director Edward Zwick, best known for such films as Glory, The Last Samurai and Courage Under Fire, has gone back to his TV roots as one of the creators of the popular late ’80s TV series thirtysomething.
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(One of his most acclaimed films, Courage Under Fire, from 1996, featured Denzel Washington in the lead, but was ignored by the Oscars.
From the first moments of the movie, director Edward Zwick ( The Last Samurai , Courage Under Fire ) establishes that Blood Diamond will not show the idealized Africa of lions and safaris you’re used to.
Zwick does excel at large-scale battlefields as anyone who has seen Glory, Courage Under Fire or The Last Samurai can tell you, and there are more than a few escapes and strafings to hold our attention even if our emotion for the characters have been left well behind with the other heavy lifting.
Whether dealing with the atrocities of the American civil war in Glory, or the fog of war in Courage Under Fire, Zwick finds some kind of sadistic pleasure in forcing us to explore our own internal gray areas of moral ambiguity.
Directed by Important Issues filmmaker Edward Zwick ("Glory," "Courage Under Fire," "The Last Samurai" ), it spotlights the brutality of the "conflict diamond" trade without seeming gratuitous or exploitative, and provides some fairly compelling personal stories to give it dramatic weight (something "Fast Food Nation," a similar agenda-oriented film, lacked).
Playing with time from a storytelling perspective is a rare but certainly not novel cinematic trick, but it's usually found in the rewind or multiple character perspective-based films such as "Run, Lola, Run" and "Go!" and "Courage Under Fire" and "Rashomon" respectively.