Yellow Birds

In recent years, the military has sanitized their marching cadences. Now the “yellow bird” gets his “little head” smashed, rather than his “f’ing head.” Surely, this has caused great relief among ornithologists everywhere. Unfortunately, they have not been able to prettify the nature of warfare itself. Incidents from the Iraq War will haunt survivors in Alexandre Moors’ Yellow Birds (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Brandon Bartle is twenty-one, making him a veritable gray beard compared to eighteen-year-old Daniel Murphy, but they are both from rural Virginia, so they bond during basic training. Sergeant Sterling also recognizes their reliability, so he takes them under his wing, at least to an extent. This is mostly a good thing, especially when they first arrive in-country.

We can tell from the flashback structure something profoundly unfortunate happened during their deployment, but Bartle clearly survived, since we watch the film through his remorseful POV. It is not long before we realize Murph’s fate remains unresolved, because a good deal of the third act involves his mother Maureen Murphy’s crusade for the truth. She is the one played by executive producer Jennifer Aniston (that’s right, Rachel from Friends is playing the mother of an eighteen-year-old).

Reportedly, Yellow Birds was recut after its Sundance premiere, which makes sense considering there are cast-members listed on its imdb page we’re at a loss to remember. The current cut is pretty tight and the temporal shifts mostly work, which is saying something. However, the current cut is probably not sufficiently scathing to satisfy to the anti-war left (which includes our current president), nor is it sympathetic enough to appeal to military families and supporters. Instead, it feels like it walks a carefully calibrated line down the middle, like one would more expect from a TV movie.

Alden Ehrenreich (who has had a tough summer with Solo) is very good as Bartle. He does his share of brooding, but it is a more complex performance than just that. Toni Collette also elevates the largely stereotypical role of his mother Amy (between this and Hereditary, she gives quite a composite portrait of motherhood). Aniston is fine as Mother Murphy, but it is a very safe role. However, Jack Huston is terrific as the increasingly unstable, but still formidable Sgt. Sterling. Most disappointingly, Jason Patric is largely squandered as CID Captain Anderson.

David Lowery’s screenplay, subsequently worked over by R.F.I. Porto, represents a good faith effort to adapt Kevin Powers’ novel. The film exhibits genuine empathy for Bartle and Murphy, which is to its credit. There are also some relatively convincing scenes of warfighting, but it never reaches the level of classical tragedy that it clearly aspires to. Indeed, it feels rather narrow in scope, especially compared to Patric’s classic war movie, The Beast. Yellow Birds is not a scandal, but it still doesn’t justify Manhattan ticket prices when it opens tomorrow (6/15), at the Village East.

The Beast: Back on DVD and Out for Badal

It’s based on a stage play, but it has a bunch of explosions. When adapting his play Nanawatai for the big screen, William Mastrosimone could fully explore the horrors of war, while still focusing on the Pashto principles of sanctuary (nanawatai) and revenge (badal). Yet, the 1980s were such a rich movie decade, the resulting film was unfairly overlooked during its initial release. Fortunately, Mill Creek Entertainment just rereleased the Kevin Reynolds’ Afghanistan war drama The Beast (trailer here) on DVD today.

It really is a vintage Soviet tank Commander Daskal’s crew drives, thanks to the Israelis, who liberated it from their belligerent neighbors. Daskal, a.k.a. Tank Boy, would definitely not approve of the tankers who abandoned their ride, but he couldn’t fault the film’s authenticity. The grizzled tank commander has only one speed, charging full speed ahead. We see the brutality he brings to bear on a village suspected of harboring mujahedeen. However, his wanton savagery, including one prisoner crushed under the tank’s track, will drive the village’s new khan, Taj, as he tracks Daskal’s tank in hopes of badal. More ominously, the village’s freshly minted widows follow behind Taj’s men, looking for an opportunity to vent their fury.

Daskal might just give them the opportunity. Thanks to the damage done to their radio and charts, the commander takes a wrong turn into a canyon cul-de-sac. He will blame their local translator Samad, a Party member in good standing, but he and Konstantin Koverchenko, the highly-educated tank driver, know better. With their fuel and provisions running low and the mujahedeen remaining in hot pursuit, Daskal starts to exhibit Captain Queeg symptoms, except he is never indecisive. However, his greatest mistake will be leaving the almost insubordinate Koverchenko to die in the desert, after learning from Samad the proper meaning and pronunciation of nanawatai and badal.

Frankly, Koverchenko’s “hey tank boy” taunts, referring to Daskal’s childhood Stalingrad exploits should have been an 80s catch-phrase up there with “I’ll be back” and “there can be only one.” Although it shares some surface similarities with the Dolph Lundgren guilty pleasure, Red Scorpion, The Beast is much deeper and classically archetypal. It also has the superior warfighting sequences, hands down. Frankly, it was probably the best film at depicting armored warfare tactics and maneuvering until Fury came along.

Jason Patric was and still is the film’s biggest star, but instead of a Hollywood star turn, he plays Koverchenko with quiet, slow-burning intensity. His work is excellent, but the instantly recognizable character actor George Dzundza is the one who really deserved award attention. He is harrowingly intense to watch as Daskal, the martinet who is starting to lose his grip, along with cherished Soviet world view. Israeli Erick Avari also gives the film tragic resonance as the bullied Samad.

To be fair, Cuban-born Steven Bauer has the commanding bearing and presence for Taj. Granted, there are fewer Afghan cast-members in The Beast than there are now Asians on Hawaii Five-O, but we should remember the country was still under Soviet occupation while the film was in production, making it difficult to recruit local talent. Instead, Reynolds largely relied on Israeli and Indian thesps, the former of whom surely enjoyed sticking it to the Russian bear.

Perhaps it was just bad timing. By the time The Beast opened in theaters, the Soviets had begun to withdraw from Afghanistan with their tails between their legs. Nevertheless, it remains a powerful portrayal of the horrors of Communist aggression and the clash of two radically dissimilar belief systems. Very highly recommended, The Beast is now available on DVD from Mill Creek Entertainment.