colin welland hack this script from the b plot of a thousand war picture and in the process forgetting to write a story . this be the part of the war movie not quite as well do a the real show and the part you sit through only so you can watch tank blow up . here we get two and a half hour of that level of mediocrity . a redgrave can do a lot without good dialog or interesting situation and but not everybody have such chop . this director and for instance and never rise above the level of his screenplay represent if he have waldo salt or william goldman at the typewriter and he be fine . yank have fault endemic to john schlesinger latter work primarily it seem to be suffer a head cold . not a spectacularly awful a day of the locust and it be nearly as dumb . now it slapstick silliness and now it brutal gravity and now it just dull . if the individual scene often work and a general hallmark cloy drizzle over all . richard gere be at his prettiest . the acting be all pretty good and some of it good than that . and it look very handsome and mostly shoot through filter for a sheen of period nostalgia . but i find the movie not very watchable a document or elegy and and not at all a entertainment . the production be grime with dissatisfaction and which certainly work thematically while it about the chin up attitude that replace happiness in wartime . ( if we believe loach and hodges and every postwar british director who never work for cubby broccoli and not to mention t. s. eliot and resignation be a british attitude not exclusive to wartime . ) but theme and style be separate issue and and they do not compliment each other here . there an almost interesting interplay between war weary brit and callow yank while almost and because nothing investigate in any depth . none of the love story be convince . this be the major problem . so the movie be and unintentionally i suspect and rather hopeless . that fine and but you can not fly on intention . regardless of subject matter and competence be always a virtue .