Robert Redford was one of the few true superstars in Hollywood history. Even the biggest names of recent decades are also-rans when compared to Redford. Other sites will no doubt be focusing on the man’s iconic films but this being Balladeer’s Blog I’m doing his overlooked movies. Well, as overlooked as a major star’s work can be, anyway.
WAR HUNT (1962) – Unusual little movie that was sort of like a Korean War forerunner of Platoon. Redford is Private Roy Loomis, a new arrival who would be the film’s Charlie Sheen equivalent, right down to his first-person narration. John Saxon would be the Tom Berenger equivalent as Private Raymond Endore, who uses the war as an excuse to give his violent tendencies full reign.
Endore is gung-ho and goes forth at night to hunt and slit the throats of North Korean soldiers. Loomis has the more simplistic “just fighting for my country and trying to survive” approach. A young camp follower comes to look up to both figures as they figuratively vie for the boy’s soul.
An uncredited Francis Ford Coppolla plays a truck driver, plus the film features Sydney Pollack, Tom Skerritt, Gavin MacLeod, Nancy Hsueh and Anthony Ray. Continue reading
No mere words will suffice to mark the passing of Charlie Kirk, the Turning Point USA hero who never hesitated to set up a chair inside the lion’s mouth and try to talk sense to political zealots. This husband and father was always thought of by me as “the amiable firebrand” because of the way he combined political passion with a willingness to engage with opponents he surely knew harbored hatred toward him. 
Remember that self-confessed school bomber 
The murder of Charlie Kirk was not a bug to those intolerant political robots. Such killing was the intention all along. May Charlie Kirk’s name live forever, and the names of Bill Ayers and his ilk return to the sewage from which their bearers came.
Several years ago a big deal was made over whether or not the 9-11 attacks could have been prevented by greater coordination between elements of the forever corrupt intelligence community. Amid the predictable partisan bickering and childish finger- pointing that characterized the 9-11 Commission and its findings an important consideration was overlooked.
By 411 BC the Peloponnesian War between Athens (and its allied city-states) and Sparta (and its allied city-states) had been raging for roughly 20 years. The war provides the backdrop for many of Aristophanes’ surviving comedies and is especially relevant where Lysistrata is concerned. Weary of the long, drawn-out conflict the women of Athens, led by the title character Lysistrata (supposedly based on Lysimache, the Priestess of Athena in Athens at the time), join forces with the women of Sparta and decide to withhold sex from the men until they agree to bring an end to the war. 
So, with Buford Pusser being exposed very recently and the Warrens being exposed long ago, yet movies still being made that depict the latter two figures in a positive light, watching any of the many movies about all of them seems in bad taste now.
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