Hitchcoc
This film is almost hard to talk about. The Dalton Trumbo novel involves a man who has been dismantled in war. He is just a trunk and a head, with his body hanging on. He still has his sexual organs. He is immobile, of course, and dependent for everything on his caretakers. One young woman, a nurse, take pity on him and gives him a sexual experience. LIke any of us, he has dreams, but he is unable to express them to anyone. He needs stimulation but is kept in a dark room and approached on rare occasions. If there is a true nightmare, this would be it. The most devastating thing is that he is really young and will probably live a long time. We are kept involved with his thoughts through a kind of personal narration. It may be the saddest film I've ever seen.
Brian Berta
Movies can be horrifying for many different reasons. They could display extreme violence, extreme sexual content, and many other frightening imagery. However, another effective way to terrify the viewer, which I just discovered while watching this movie, is putting the protagonist in a dire situation. The feeling of hopelessness that this movie provides can not be any better.After a soldier fighting in WW1 named Joe Bonham is rendered limbless, blind, deaf, and mute due to being injured by an artillery shell attack, he ends up in a hospital where he periodically hallucinates and retreats into his memories as he learns to handle living in such a despairing way.Part of the reason why this movie works so well is that Joe is completely powerless to the outside forces. If a doctor decides to kill him, he won't be able to do anything about it. If someone tries operating on him, he won't be able to stop them. This sense of hopelessness works very well, and the condition that he is in sort of amplifies this even more. The creative and promising plot line of the film makes a cause and effect reaction which helps the film work in other ways.His flashbacks worked very well at helping me to develop a strong connection with him and other characters he was around. My favorite character in the film, by far, was his father. He did love his son like any other father would, but there were some scenes which made him look like a very nice man. He said how he really loved his fishing pole at a point in the movie. However, after Joe loses it while camping with him, he chooses not to get mad at him as that was their last trip together. This scene had a huge impact on me. Other scenes involve a tender and charming love scene with him and his girlfriend the day before he is shipped off to war. That scene echoes throughout the entire movie, and it often comes to mind when he faces times of despair. Another character that I liked a lot was Jesus Christ, who was in a few of his flashbacks. He doesn't have much advice to give to Joe as in real life, there isn't much that he can do.The acting is pretty good. I thought that Timothy Bottoms (Joe Bonham) did a pretty good job as the lead role. His performance was pretty convincing. I've seen a lot of people say that he did a very bad job, and when I hear people say that, they often bring up his performance in the scene where the doctors are cutting his arms and legs off. I will admit that his performance in that scene wasn't that convincing. Looking back, however, that was only 1 scene out of the movie that I had an issue with. I feel like many people are overlooking that fact. If you think that his acting was bad all around, that's fine. However, if this scene is your only reference point, I will suggest re- thinking your opinion.While Bottoms was good, I feel like a couple other actors were just as good, if not, better than him. Jason Robards as Joe's father gave an overall strong performance. Even though he wasn't in all that many of the scenes, he was pretty effective when he was in the movie. Also, Donald Sutherland as Jesus Christ had a nice charm to him that worked very well. His performance is charismatic. Many of the other actors did pretty nice jobs as well. It's important to note that I don't think that anyone's performance in this film was incredible. I thought that the best performances in this movie were pretty good. However, I also can't say that they're as bad as some people are making them out to be. The actors were pretty decent all around.Another criticism I've seen people bring up about this movie is that it's music is really bad. They were saying that the happy music beat you over the head, and that it was trying to shove happy emotions down your throat. I honestly don't see why people are having an issue with this. It's perfectly normal for a movie to play happy music during a happy scene. You wouldn't expect it to play sad music. The music choice was just fine in my opinion. Also, like the criticism some people have on its acting, I have only seen 1 scene as a reference point by the people who agree with this criticism (I won't state which scene as it is a bit of a spoiler). While I don't agree with this criticism, my message to the people who disliked its music is: Did you dislike its music choice all around or in just one scene? If it was all around, that's fine. If it was just one scene, I would suggest toning down your hatred.In conclusion, this was an amazing movie which was terrifying and engaging. It worked very well at terrifying me, and the flashbacks and hallucinations were all very good. Its ending is really exceptional as well, and it is a perfect way to end the film. I'm not going to forget its ending anytime soon, and it will probably linger with me for years to come. The acting was also pretty good. I'm glad that I checked this film out. It did a great job at engaging me, and it's always refreshing to see a film which displays the horrors of war. Especially in creative ways, which is what this film did.
bkoganbing
If you are at all squeamish than please avoid seeing Johnny Got His Gun. Not there is anything to see that is particularly, but Timothy Bottoms character in and of himself is one frightening example of what can come out of war and should it.The unkindest cut of all is minutes before the armistice was declared in operation and the guns ceased, Timothy Bottoms receives a blast from a mortar shell. Everything that makes one relate to what's around is now gone from him, four limbs, the windows to the senses all gone. But more of his brain is intact than the doctors realize and the film is narrated by Bottoms trying to communicate and also his memories of much better times before the Great War.Dalton Trumbo of the Hollywood Ten had been back working for over a decade now from the blacklist, but here he was not writing a script but also was the director filming his own novel. No doubt certain people were looking for a hidden subversive message. But the only message that Johnny Got His Gun delivers is war is very bad thing and does terrible things to some human bodies.Of course the title is a past tense of that opening verse of George M. Cohan's period flag waver Over There. So many young men from so many countries marched to war with those songs thinking war was some kind of honor thing. Honor if there ever was any in war was lost in that conflict where automatic weapons, poison gas, and the tank came to the fore. Kids with 19th century ideals like Bottoms as we see his reminiscences came up against something that flag waving nostrums didn't take into account.Bottoms is brilliant in the film that first gave him stardom and the rest of the cast performs well. Credit goes to Dalton Trumbo for a necessary, but harrowing piece of cinema.
Theo Robertson
This is one of these films you never forget . To coin a cliché once seen and never forgotten and has become well known over the years via the Metallica video promo for one . It's a heavy handed statement on war that once a peace deal is signed two things always remain and that is the dead stay dead and the injured remain injured . The loved ones of the dead are emotional victims of war while the injured are physical victims of the war . Be as cynical and as scathing as you want but Dalton Trumbo knows exactly what he's doing and he succeeds in his magnificent manipulation of the audience . Timothy Bottom was snubbed by the award ceremonies for his Oscar worthy performance which is meant to reduce the audience to tears and the film itself was mainly ignored by the prestigious awards for obviously being too subversive , politics always has a part to play in who wins what . There is an irony when film awards are handed out . At least every soldier who won a medal deserved it . Film awards are entirely different But after seeing JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN ask yourself a question . What is it about Joe Bonham that elicits such sincere grief for him ? Is it because he was a young man from a democratic society ? Put it like this - if he wasn't a 20 year old kid from early 20th Century America fighting in the Great War , say for example he was a Taliban theocrat from Afghanistan or Pakistan who was guilty of raping children and throwing acid in the face of women and had his arms , legs and face blown off by a NATO shell would the audience feel the same level of sympathy ? Of course not and rightly so . Watch this film and take something from it but never forget what Hemmingway said that there's some things worse than war and they all end in defeat
