Retro Film Review: A Soldier's Sweetheart (1998)
War is phenomenon that could be approached from many different angles - either directly, by showing its brutal reality, or indirectly, by showing its aftermath. One of the more interesting approaches to the way war affects human beings is used in A Soldier's Sweetheart, 1998 drama written and directed by Thomas Michael Donnelly.
The plot is based on the short story Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong by Tim O'Brien. It starts in 1967 Vietnam where US Army soldier Rat Kiley (played by Kiefer Sutherland) tells his comrades about strange events that happened few months earlier. At the time Rat was deployed at the lonely MASH outpost in the middle of jungle. Compared with other parts of Vietnam the place looks like an oasis of peace and tranquillity - officers never show up to bother enlisted men, while ever-present Viet Cong guerrillas, for their own reasons, abstain from attacking Rat and his comrades. However, medic Fossie (played by Skeet Ulrich) is getting increasingly depressed over his separation from girlfriend and engineers crazy plan to bring her all the way from USA to the outpost. The plan works and one day helicopter brings sweet girl named Marianne (played by Georgina Cates). Just as Fossie is happy to be with his girl, his comrades are delighted to have a little slice of civilian life in the middle of the war zone. But, after some time Marianne is bored and starts to leave the base and explore local nature and people. Rat and his friends now have to worry about her safety, but it gets even worse when Marianne begins to feel deep attraction to guns and violence.
One of the most frightening aspects of war is its ability to reveal real nature of people who would, under normal circumstances, remain decent human beings. The original story underlined this by having the least likely character to go through such frightening transformation. Because of that A Soldier's Sweetheart could have been powerful war drama despite the preposterous idea of soldier bringing his girlfriend in the middle of war zone. Unfortunately, huge potentials of the story remained unused. Main reason for that could be found in Donnelly's inept direction – the plot, which could, under normal circumstances, serve for one-hour film, is stretched to two hours. Instead of drama the audience has to endure long and boring shots of New Zealand locations (that stand for Vietnam) and Marianne's attempts to understand "the essence of war". Just as protagonist began to lose connection with Marianne, the viewers are quickly going to lose any interest for this film. It all ends with another pointless, symbolic, "artsy" and pretentious epilogue. Good actors like Sutherland and Ulrich waste their talents, while Georgina Cates is terribly miscast in her role. A Soldier's Sweetheart probably isn't among the worst war films, but it represents one of the greatest disappointments of the genre.
RATING: 2/10 (-)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.films.reviews on May 13th 2004)
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