By Richard Winters
My Rating: 7 out of 10
4-Word Review: Rebellious surgeons break rules.
In 1951 during the Korean War Frank Pierce (Donald Sutherland), who goes by the nickname Hawkeye, arrives at the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital as their new surgeon. He gets placed in a tent with Frank Burns (Robert Duvall), but the two don’t get along due to Frank’s religious zealotry, so he gets transferred to another tent. Hawkeye then gets placed with another new surgeon nicknamed Trapper John (Elliot Gould) and the two, with their irreverent sense of humor and non-conforming ways, immediately become best friends. Not only do they break most of the rules, but they also routinely play pranks on others with their biggest ones being on Frank who falls for Margaret (Sally Kellerman) who is a head nurse.
The film, which is based on the 1968 novel ‘MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors” by Richard Hooker, which in turn was based on his experiences as an Army doctor during the Korean War, gets largely overshadowed by the TV-Series, which ran for 11 seasons and has become a huge cult hit. In retrospect I actually like the movie better. Robert Altman’s direction where conversations and actions overlap helps to give the setting a realistic kinetic feel where nothing seems staged. While I could’ve done without his patent whistling I still liked the portrayal of the Hawkeye character better here. In the series Alan Alda played him as a very talkative, loud, and opinionated person that dominated every scene he was in while here the character is more like just one of the guys that occasionally pushes-the-envelope, but only because he, like everyone else there, is a victim of the bleak circumstances that they’re in. This also has a much better balance between the humor and drama. The show had a tendency to get preachy but the movie manages to make the occasional serious point, but still overall remains consistently funny.
On the negative side it’s highly anachronistic with the characters behaving too much like it’s the late 60’s instead of the early 50’s almost like they’re a bunch of stoned, ‘free love’ hippies who found a time machine and decided to go back 20 years. While the sexual escapades are amusing it does tend to get one dimensional. Everyone is portrayed as being a sex maniac with no inhibition or restraint. Having some not engage, either because they just weren’t that into it, or wanting to remain faithful to their spouses/ romantic partners back home, would’ve given it a better balance and certainly been more realistic for the period.
Having Hawkeye immediately mock Frank when he wants to pray seemed off too. Granted there were atheists and non-religious people back then, but they tended to be in-the-closet as religion was still the dominant cultural force. If Hawkeye and crew got annoyed later on when Frank attempted to let’s say ‘convert’ them then it would be understandable, but upfront I’d think he’d not be so aggressive with his disdain and might even politely play along a bit, especially since he had just arrived there and wouldn’t know who else he’d be offending with his off-handed comments.
It’s all very disappointing the way Frank gets written out halfway through. I really liked the way Duvall played the role. On the TV-series the Frank character was a benign snobby dimwit that was constantly the butt of all the jokes and couldn’t do much about it, but here Duvall plays the part with an aggressive, even menacing edge that would’ve made him a great nemesis that should’ve allowed him to stay all the way through. Also, it’s a bit ridiculous that he gets put into a strait jacket after he has a confrontation with Hawkeye. Many people can and do get into fights and are not immediately deemed ‘insane’ because of it. If anything, he should’ve been handcuffed along with Hawkeye since it was Hawkeye who goaded him into it.
The Hot Lips character is another disappointment. Initially I thought she was great as her haughty ways helped give the proceedings some conflict, but then halfway through she does a complete Jekyll and Hyde. Initially she hates the place and just about everyone in it, even becomes a victim to a cruel prank, but then later during the big football game she’s seen on the side lines as a cheerleader aggressively rooting for them to win the game when logically you’d think she would be pulling for the other team.
Apparently, the movie’s logic is that since it gets revealed that she’s been having sex with Duke, played by Tom Skerrit, that this then ‘changed’ her. She’s now ‘liberated’ and no longer frigid/uptight, but it’s too drastic a switch that only further adds to the film’s overblown concept that sex can somehow ‘solve everything’.
My Rating: 7 out of 10
Released: January 25, 1970
Runtime: 1 Hour 56 Minutes
Rated R
Director: Robert Altman
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube
Scopophilia 