Brass vs. Grunt

At the sad, debilitating end of the Boer War, three Australian soldiers are brought to court-martial. The charge: murdering some Boer "civilians" they have captured in a vengeful raid, along with a German missionary whose death has provoked a murmur of international reproach. The soldiers' commander, Lord Kitchener, wants to make an example of them so as to disarm world opinion about his unedifying conduct of a nasty war.

Breaker Morant persuasively posits a parallel between this century's first large-scale colonial conflict (the Boer War) and its most recent (Viet Nam). It derives from that analogy an immediacy that one does not often find in films set in the dimming past. But there is a larger success: this very traditional-looking film is dramatically taut, full of strongly developed characters who never deteriorate into good-guy, bad-guy spokesmanship. There is no doubt that the soldiers committed the crimes with which they are charged. But their defense attorney (well played by Jack Thompson) argues that it is both a miscarriage of justice and an act of hypocrisy to single out these men for crimes no different from those committed by half the British Expeditionary Force--and, the film implies, by soldiers on half the battlefields and paddyfields since.

At heart, Breaker Morant is a courtroom drama: its basis is a play that was, in turn, based on a historical incident. There are well-staged flashbacks that grant the film a life and movement outside its judicial chamber. But there is plenty inside too, thanks in particular to Edward Woodward's fine, full-throated performance in the title role. Breaker is a hard man with a broad romantic streak. Soldier, poet and singer, with a whimsically ironic acceptance of his fate, Breaker approaches the dimensions of a Renaissance grunt. If the film that bears his name is perhaps a bit too much cut on the square, if its technique does not quite match its fine eye for moral distinctions, it is nonetheless another distinctive achievement from the fast-rising Australian film industry.

-- By Richard Schickel

Everybody just loves Neil Diamond. Black folks cheer his music; rednecks stomp and holler. He's a pop sensation, from The Bronx to the Hollywood Bowl, and a wonderful human being to boot. So where's the dramatic tension? It comes from an unlikely source: the 1925 Samson Raphaelson play and the Al Jolson movie version that ushered in the talkies. There is no Mammy in the new Jazz Singer; there's not even a momma. But the plot is the same: a young Orthodox cantor wants to become a singing star, straining to break the shackles of tradition even as he yearns for the blessing of a parental embrace. And Diamond has adhered to one other aspect of Jolson's performance: he sings one number in blackface.

Diamond is unique among pop stars in that he projects not a scintilla of sexual danger; but here he is required only to be a dutiful son, husband (twice), father and pop idol. With the help of Lucie Arnaz as Neil's girlfriend, and Laurence Olivier (who really must stop playing Jews and Nazis) as his father, the movie plods along earnestly, endlessly--schmaltz in three- quarter time. Yet in its elephantine way, The Jazz Singer may attract much of the Rocky crowd, and for the same reasons. It recalls simpler days and sweeter movies; it does not condescend to its audience; it is neither angry nor esoteric. For many, this kind of movie has a certain restorative appeal. others may find the experience like eating your mother's chicken soup when you're not sick.

-- By Richard Corliss

BEST OF 1980

Altered States. A modern Dr. Jekyll unleashes the primal beast within himself. The meeting of Paddy Chayefsky and Ken Russell set off a daft, cagey combustion of ideas and styles, producing a fantasy of delirium and delight.

The Big Red One. Veteran Action Director Samuel Fuller's elegy to a genre he loves (war movies) and a life he lived (as a young soldier in a famous World War II division). Tough, sentimental, definitive.

The Elephant Man. David Lynch transforms the story of John Merrick--the noble ogre of Victorian England--into a grim, lovely fairy tale. John Hurt inhabits Merrick with grace and spirit in the year's sweetest movie.

The Empire Strikes Back--with even more thrills, derring-do, spectacular special effects and emotional resonance than Star Wars.

Melvin and Howard. An American dreamer, Melvin Dummar, goes for the big score, insisting he is the heir of Howard Hughes. Jonathan Demme directed the screwiest and most original movie of 1980, and deserves a better commercial fate than he has so far received.

Mon Oncle d'Amerique. Screenwriter Jean Gruault and Director Alain Resnais have devised a lecture on human behavior that is also a delightful comedy of manners. Demands and rewards intelligence. Take notes, and enjoy.

Ordinary People. The only American film of 1980 to touch, effectively and wrenchingly, the most common chord: the way family members try, and fail, to love one another. Sensitively directed (by Robert Redford) and performed.

Raging Bull. Robert De Niro and Director Martin Scorsese reveal little of the psychology that drove boxer Jake La Motta, but much about their own passion and intelligence for making movies. A technical knockout.

Return of the Secaucus Seven. Seven veterans of the antiwar movement meet, on the cusp of maturity, ten years after. John Sayles wrote the year's wittiest screenplay, found humor and humanity in his subject--and did it all for $60,000.

Wise Blood. John Huston, at his eccentric best, adapts the Flannery O'Connor tale about a God-forsaken evangelist. For red-clay craziness--weird, scary and funny--this is the one.