Pretty Good

Don't listen to the negative reviews

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

While this dramatizes American involvement in two different wars (overlapping in the film's structure even though they take place several years apart), it is presented in a forward manner that is never confusing. Of course, one of those wars is the second world war, and the other one is what little involvement that the American military had in the attempt to create a Jewish state in Israel. At the center of this is Jewish American Kirk Douglas, an army attorney with his own ways of viewing situations, often to his detriment and on occasion to the bemused smirk of his superiors.With John Wayne as a two star general and Yul Brynnur as the Jewish leader fighting for the independent state, there's sure star power. Angie Dickinson is pretty much in the background as Douglas's wife, but has a few moments of greatly influencing her idealistic husband. Senta Berger plays an Italian Jew who teaches Douglas the ways of the Jewish Nationals who consider Douglas an American outsider.One poignant moment has Douglas showing Wayne around Dachau and observing Wayne becoming sick inside as he realizes the horrors. Future Tevye, Topol, plays a classic music loving Arab leader struggling for peace in his changing world. A walk-on by Frank Sinatra as a pilot seems almost gratuitous. Michael Hordern appears briefly as a politician who tries to urge Douglas to convince the Jewish Israelis to proceed slowly, giving the indication that America would only support the leaders who would aide them in getting oil.At a lengthy 140 minutes, this manages to fly by pretty quickly with moments intense and poignant, violent and peaceful, traditional and modern. I really felt that I was getting a pretty authentic view of some of the situations that could have gone on, taking account that this war for control has never really ended, only getting more complex as new leaders and technologies have become involved. Indeed, no matter how much money and power a country at war has, the results are usually the same as those countries which don't.

Luther Adler played David Ben Gurion but isn't listed as such; Golda was in the U.S. raising arms money, but is not represented in the film. At least Adler resembles Ben Gurion. Golda Meir doesn't mention Marcus (Douglas) in her brilliant 1975 autobiography, 'My Life,' which I have read. Berger and Dickinson are merely wallpaper. Wayne will overact miserably in any role in order to make money, but he never served in any form of military, much less combat. Sinatra was drunk and the battle scenes show soldiers dropping like zombies in a bad horror flick.Golda Meir raised an incredible amount of money for the Israeli cause. She liked to visit the U.S., especially Milwaukee, where she grew up. Before she could return with the arms money preceding her, the NYC 'cabbie' was in an accident and her leg was broken. She was hospitalized but still raised money there. A movie about the Arab-Israeli war is 'duffus' without a character named Golda because no single leader did more for Israel achieving statehood than Golda Meir, who was prime minister from 1967-72 and to whom I am not related and never had the pleasure of meeting. I did, however, stay at a Holiday Inn Express in Milwaukee one night.(By the way, the Arabs didn't attack until immediately after the statehood celebration, not before as depicted. That's a small inconsistency amongst many glaring ones. Golda left to raise funds in the U.S. right after the scroll signing. She raised over $50 million which matched the sum of an earlier fund-raising trip).

Col. Marcus (Kirk Douglas) is recruited to fight for an independent Israel. He must organize the disparate fighting forces to win against overwhelming odds.The action is pretty good and the underdog story is very compelling. Kirk Douglas and Yul Brynner make for very charismatic leaders. Seeing Frank Sinatra in the movie breaks the tension. He's in it more for the comedy and probably the box office. And similarly, the same can be said of John Wayne. He's more of a distraction from the main story. Angie Dickinson has little to do as Mrs Marcus. Senta Berger is the Israeli love interest and she overacts in a pivotal scene. There's a lot of melodrama going on with her.The saving grace is Kirk Douglas. He is the magnetic personality that glues the movie together. He's the driving force, and it's him that makes this movie works. It is a bit of a sided propaganda piece, but I don't think it should be penalized for it.

This film is a decidedly one-sided account of the events leading up to the partition of Palestine and the establishment of the State of Israel. Except for Topol, playing a sheik, there is no consideration given to the Palestinian point of view. But that aside, the film is poorly written but decently executed. The cast is stellar, containing Kirk Douglas, John Wayne, Angie Dickinson, Senta Berger and Yul Brynner. The story could be epic...the struggle of Israel, alone and lacking weapons, against most of the Arab world. But, as I mentioned, the writing is the film's weakest point. The dialog seems stilted in places. The writing just basically lacks the strength to keep the viewer interested. I also found the sound track quality on the DVD to be poor, or perhaps it wasn't properly mixed. But some parts of the film, particularly dialog, are difficult to understand. If you crank the volume up enough, you can understand the audio OK, but then the music will blast you out of the room. The actual events featured tremendous amount of heroism (on both sides, actually), a story that kept the world's attention riveted on Palestine/Israel for a long time and political wrangling that created the monster that is today's middle east. Yet most of that was left untold. Also unrealistic was the Arab artillery accuracy. It seems that nearly every shot was a direct hit on a moving truck. Nobody's that good. I enjoyed the film on a shallow "action film" level, but was terribly disappointed that it didn't show the true events of the birth of Israel.