Zwick fails to inspire with his latest flick

‘Courage’ strives to pluck patriotic heartstrings, but fails to
drum up a pulseBy Brandon Wilson

Summer Bruin Contributor

Once upon a time when you heard the name Edward Zwick, what came
to mind, if anything at all, was the yuppie drama "thirtysomething"
and the famously whiny interchange between its young professional
characters.

But Zwick, the film director, has covered vastly different
ground when allowed access to the big screen.

Following 1989’s "Glory" and 1994’s epic-like "Legends of the
Fall" comes the newest Zwick opus "Courage Under Fire." Zwick’s
rule seems to be a battle scene for every film, because like his
previous works, this one illustrates the way a split-second on the
battlefield can render irrevocable changes in your life.

But rather than show us the Civil War or the First World War,
this story takes place in a war even short-attention spanned
twentysomethings can remember: Desert Storm.

Denzel Washington stars as army Lt. Col. Nathaniel Serling, a
dedicated career soldier who served as a tank commander in the
Gulf.

Serling is an exemplary officer but he’s haunted by a friendly
fire incident at the battleground of Al Bathra. At home, he becomes
dependent on the healing properties of the bottle and creates
distance between himself and his family.

Serling is given an assignment to investigate a nominee for the
coveted Medal of Honor, and lo and behold, a woman is one of the
nominees. The award would be posthumous since the helicopter pilot
sacrificed her life for the sake of her men, but Serling must get
the story from the men who were there before President Bush can
place the medal around the dead soldier’s daughter.

"She was butch" one soldier’s wife says of Capt. Karen Walden,
the officer in question, which is the first time in cinema history
(and probably the last) that a character played by Meg Ryan will be
described as such. Armed with a Texas drawl strong enough to knock
the caps off beer bottles, Ryan as Walden is seen only in
flashback, and to Serling’s chagrin, her personality is distinctly
different with each telling.

The conflicting stories make Col. Serling hip to the fact that
somebody’s lying about something, and he sets out to grill the four
men (including Lou Diamond Phillips as a muy macho infantryman)
until the truth comes to light.

And of course, the investigation forces Serling to come to terms
with his own demons born on that fateful night in the desert.

Washington is easily one of the finest screen actors alive or
working, but unfortunately the film itself doesn’t have quite
enough for the actor to chew on. Serling quite often appears on the
verge of breakdown, and despite the awesome guilt his friendly fire
has put on him, his emotion always seems overwrought or
disproportionate.

This isn’t to say Washington overacted, it simply seems in the
beginning that there is something more to his involvement in the
case, and ultimately there isn’t.

As a mystery, "Courage Under Fire" fails to keep the audience
riveted and has a plot structure that’s (borrowed from Akira
Kurosawa’s masterpiece "Rashomon") too simple for its own good.
Serling simply interviews the same people until each one, in his
own way, just cracks and spills his respective guts. Not exactly
detective work of the Easy Rawlins caliber.

As for Ryan, there’s little for her to do except be tough, or
possess whatever quality the flashback teller endows her with.
Other than that she only has a mother-with-daughter montage, which
provides little insight into her character.

Written by Patrick Sheane Duncan, one of Hollywood’s busiest
scribes, and photographed by Roger Deakins, "Courage Under Fire"
isn’t bad so much as it is uninspired. Despite the talent involved,
the movie never finds another level to operate on or becomes more
than just the aforementioned plot line drawn out over 100
minutes.

As it is, the movie just does its duty like a good soldier, and
hopes that through osmosis we’ll feel the emotion Serling does, and
never bother to wonder why.