the audience applauded

As Good As It Gets

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Like the Movies made about Jesus Christ, no one is going to Agree about its complete Accuracy or Decisions concerning the Time Period covered. It's virtually an Impossible Task to present a Total Conception and with Budget and Running Time Restrictions adding to the Limitations.Most WWII Historians, Armchair or otherwise, tend to give Gregory Peck a nod and are Thankful that His Liberal Leanings did not Cloud His Judgement or Portrayal of the Dynamic and Controversial General.It is Well Known that MacArthur was Hell Bent on Crafting an Image of Himself as Larger than Life. The Movie has a few Scenes where His Aides Instruct the Newsreel Cameraman to Film the General from a Low Angle, "He loves that technique.". He used Props (corncob pipe) to give Himself a Unique Flair and His Filmed Entrances are Legendary.MacArthur was not only a Brilliant General, He was a Brilliant Man. His Eloquent way with Words, making His Arguments and displayed Insights with a Poetic Zeal. All of the Aforementioned is seen in this Even Handed Account, originally Made-for TV than Edited for a Theatrical Release.The Film is Sweeping in Concept, if not in Presentation. It's somewhat Low-Budget renders a Flat Production, but it makes up for it with Peck's Command of the Role and an Appropriately Wordy Script.Above Average and a Powerful Portrayal of just over a Decade in the Complicated and ever Interesting Leader who was much Loved by the American People, the Philippines, and Japan (for His compassionate and intelligent restructuring of the island's ashes).President Truman did not Worship the General, as many did and the Movie ends with MacArthur Relieved by the Commander and Chief. It seems even the Accomplished Military Leader was Unable to "Walk On Water", and was Symbolically Crucified by the President.

The movie "MacArthur" begins and ends at Gen. Douglas MacArthur's, Gregory Peck, Alma Mata the US Military Academy of West Point on the Hudson. We see a frail 82 year old Gen.MacArthur give the commencement speech to the graduating class of 1962 about what an honor it is to serve their country. The film then goes into an almost two hour long flashback on Gen. MacArthur's brilliant as well as controversial career that starts in the darkest hours of WWII on the besieged island of Corregidor in the Philippines in the early spring of 1942.Told to leave he island for Australia before the Japanese military invade it Gen. MacArthur for the very first time in his military career almost disobeys a direct order from his superior US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dan O'Herlihy. Feeling that he'll be deserting his men at their greatest hour of need MacArthur reluctantly, together with his wife and young son, did what he was told only to have it haunt him for the reminder of the war. It was that reason, his escape under fire from death or captivity by the Japanese, that drove Gen. MacArthur to use all his influence to get FDR two years later to launch a major invasion of the Philippians, instead of the island of Formosa, to back up his promise to both the Philippine people as well as the thousands of US POWS left behind. That he'll return and return with the might of the US Army & Navy to back up his pledge!In the two years up until the invasion of the Philippine Islands Gen. MacArther battered the Japanese forces in the South Pafific in a number of brilliantly conceived island hop battles that isolated and starved hundreds of thousands of Japanese troops into surrender. The General did that suffering far less US Military losses then any other allied commander in the War in the Pacific! It was in 1950/51 in the Korean War that Gen. MacArthur achieved his most brilliant victory as well as his worst military defeat. After outflanking the advancing North Korean Army in the brilliant and perfectly executed, with the invading US Marines suffering less then 100 casualties, back door or left hook invasion of Inchon Gen. MacArther feeling invincible sent the US/UN forces under his command to the very border, along the Yalu River, of Communist Red China. Told by his subordinates that he's facing the threat of a massive ground attack by Communist Chinese troops Gen. MacArthur pressed on anyway until that attack did materialized cutting the US & UN forces to ribbons. The unstoppable wave after wave of attacking Red Chinese troops forced the US/UN forces to retreat in the "Big Bug Out" of 1950 with their very lives, leaving all their equipment behind, across the North Korean border even abandoning the South Korean capital city of Seoul! This turned out to be one of the biggest military disaster in US history with the US forces losing a record, in the Korean War, 1,000 lives on the very first day-Nov. 29/30 1950-of the Communist Chinese invasion!Shocked and humiliated in what he allowed, due mostly to his own arrogance, to happened MacArthur went on the offensive not against the advancing Communist Chinese and Noth Koreans forces but his own Commander and Chief Pres. Harry S. Truman, Ed Flanders, in him not having the spin or guts to do what has to be done: Launch a full scale invasion of Communist China with nuclear weapons if necessary to prevent its troops from overrunning the Korean Peninsula! For Pres. Truman who had taken just about enough garbage from Gen. MacArthur in him running off his mouth in public in how he was mishandling the war in not going all out, like MacArthur wanted him to, against the Red Chinese this was the last straw! On April 11, 1951 Pres. Truman unceremoniously relived Gen. MacArthur from his command as Supreme Commander of the US/UN forces in Korea! Pres. Truman's brave but very unpopular decision also, by not going along with MacArthur's total war strategy, prevented a Third World War from breaking out with the Soviet Union-Communist China's ally- who at the time-like the US-had the Atomic Bomb! Pres. Truman''s controversial decision to dump the very popular Gen. MacArthur also cost him his re-election in 1952 with his polls numbers so low-in the mid 20's- that he withdrew-in March of that year- from the US Presidential Campaign!In was Gen. MacArthur's misfortune to be around when the political and military climates in the world were changing in how to conduct future wars. With the horrors of a nuclear war now, in 1950/51, a reality it would have been national suicide to go all out, like Gen. MacArthur wanted to, against the Red Chinese with it very possibly touching off a nuclear holocaust that would engulf not only the US USSR & Red China but the entire world! It was that important reality of future war that Gen. MacArthur was never taught, since the A and H Bomb weren't yet invented, in West Point.Back to 1962 we can now see that Gen. MacArthur, after finishing his commencement speech at West Point, had become both an older and wiser soldier as well as , since his retirement from the US Military, elder statesman in his feeling about war and the utter futility of it. One thing that Gen. MacArthur was taught at an early age, from his Civil War General dad Douglas MacArthur Sr, that stuck to him all his life was that to a soldier like himself war should be the very last-not first-resort in settling issues between nations. In that it's the soldiers who have to fight and die in it. It took a lifetime, with the advent of the nuclear age, for Gen. MacArthur to finally realize just how right and wise his dad a Congressional Medal of Honor winner, like himself, really was!

The film transported everyone back to October 20, 1944 where we seemed to be part of the great Philippine 'I Shall Return' landing scene… It was on that Leyte shore where General MacArthur reaped his fame… Above all, Gregory Peck triumphed in his portrayal of the great general… It is the stride, the set of the shoulders, the intensity… It's what both men have had in common: intensity, total absorption, devotion… With MacArthur it was for the military… With Peck it was for the challenge of acting… An Academy Award winner for "To Kill a Mockinbird", an Oscar nominee for "Keys to the Kingdom", "The Yearling", "Gentleman's Agreement", and "Twelve O'Clock High"—he has played everything from an apparently homicidal amnesiac to a crusading journalist; from a troubled gunfighter to an obsessed attorney; from biblical David to Captain Horatio Hornblower… He has brought to them all his own unique insight, his character, his sincerity, warmth and love, and especially, his humor… There is a scene where 'MacArthur' stands on deck with the 'President of the Philippines.' We can hear the dialogue: "General, I hope the water isn't too deep," says the 'President,' "because my people will find out I can't swim." Then come Peck's sonorous voice: "And my people are going to find that I can't walk on water!" As "MacArthur," Peck once again justified his reputation as a giant in the film industry… Through him we felt MacArthur's emotions: we knew his anger, his happiness and we understood the relationship with his whole family

Since Douglas MacArthur affected more human lives—for the better—than any other American not elected President, he deserved a better film biography. Not that Universal's "MacArthur" is bad. It's just not all it should have been.Oddly enough, the potential was there. From the very early "Star Trek" episode "The Corbomite Maneuver" (1966) to the recent HBO films "Something the Lord Made" (2OO4) and "Warm Springs" (2OO5), director Joseph Sargent has emerged as one of the most expressively human directors in film, a man capable of subtly shaping the emotional shadings of his actors' performances, and carrying the audience exactly where he wants them to go. The producer, Frank McCarthy, also gave us "Patton" (197O), the legendary Jerry Goldsmith scored both films, and Universal widely touted the fact that the film was "four years in preparation and production." Yet for all of this, "MacArthur" is perfectly adequate—and not much more than that.The film begins in early 1942, shortly before the beleaguered general was ordered—by President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Dan O'Herlihy)—to flee the Philippines to avoid capture by the Japanese. Thus, this film omits: · MacArthur's birth in 188O in a frontier barracks in Arkansas still subject to attack by Native American tribesmen—thus establishing that his remarkable life spanned the distance from bows-and-arrows to thermonuclear weapons; · his graduation from West Point—first in a class of 95, · how he joined his famous father, General Arthur MacArthur (who had earned the Medal of Honor at Missionary Ridge in the Civil War) on assignments in Japan, China and, most importantly, in the Philippines; · his heroic exploits in the 1914 excursion into Vera Cruz; · how he leaped about the trenches of World War One like a mountain goat, often wounded, and promoted with blinding speed to Brigadier General; · his postwar service as West Point's youngest—and most progressive—commandant; · his participation in the court-martial of Billy Mitchell in 1924; · his routing of the Bonus Marchers in 1932; · his efforts to sustain a woefully-underfunded Army as Chief of Staff in the early 193O's; · his retirement from the U.S. Army to become Field Marshal (!) of the Army of the Philippines; · and the reactivation of his commission by FDR shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War.All this is omitted in favor of prolonged footage of MacArthur trying to fight off seasickness while being evacuated by PT boat—thus, we know that "General Mac" is a legend, but not why; nor can we appreciate why the allegations of cowardice were so wounding to "Dugout Doug"—and so patently unfounded.The remainder of his career is presently straightforwardly: His island-hopping "Hit 'em where they ain't" campaign, the fulfillment of his pledge to the Filipinos— "I shall return!"—his crowning achievement, the winning of the peace in postwar Japan, then the difference of opinion with President Harry Truman (a properly feisty Ed Flanders) over the conduct of the Korean conflict which resulted in his outright firing, and finally, his proclamation to Congress that "old soldiers…simply fade away," after which he did just that. All quite historically accurate, and all presented with a very deliberate lack of commentary.Sargent and the producers almost painfully distance themselves from adorning the historical record with their own approval or disapproval: If MacArthur's actions appear noble, let them be presented as such; if they appear egotistical or bombastic, let those conceptions register sans comment. Since Joe Sargent is quite expert at subtly manipulating his audience's reactions—again, see Warm Springs—this refusal to offer comment appears quite intentional. Historically, that may be commendable, but it almost defeats the efforts of the viewer to place this extraordinary man in any kind of rational perspective.And finally, there is a sort of "made on the cheap" feel to the film, as there is to "Midway," released about the same time. Both films were relegated to "television" directors--Sargent in this case, Jack Smight on "Midway," and both have a made-for-TV-look. Even Jerry Goldsmith's march, while perfectly serviceable, lack the subtle undertones and the grandeur of his "Patton" theme--just another way in which a larger-than-life man is memorialized by a very ordinary film.There was vanity and pettiness in this man, inarguably; there was also greatness—and love him or loathe him, one must acknowledge the fact that MacArthur did what no military commander before him had done: he won the peace.In the end, "MacArthur"—like so many film biographies—is a good place to begin research into this remarkable man, but a poor place to end it.