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As the last work of one of America,s greatest film directors,Chesty is a short and sincere tribute to the most decorated of US Marine officers but is troubling in exposing Ford,s sometimes (not always) uncritical celebration of military traditions. If the film had been seen when it was shot,in 1970,with the Viet Nam war still raging,the use as host of the aging John Wayne,associated at the time with The Green Berets film and criticism of peace demonstrators,might have come off as offensive.We should focus instead on the tightly put together look back at Chesty Puller,s career,using footage from 1920s Haiti and Nicaragua involvements,Guadalcanal and New Guinea in WWII,and finally Korea; the elegiac use of blurry dissolves and superimpositions to weave the present of Puller,s participation in brightly colored parades in his honor with images of the past as he remembers them.
