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Tom's Guide
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Tom's Guide
Prime Video is about to lose one of the best war movies ever made — and it's just as good as ‘Saving Private Ryan'
'Saving Private Ryan' casts a pretty long shadow over the war movie genre. The 1998 Steven Spielberg classic is beloved and acclaimed for very good reason. It's fantastic. But did you know that in the very same year, another WWII movie hit theaters, and it's every bit as powerful and well-crafted. I'm, of course, talking about Terrence Malick's 'The Thin Red Line.' Released on Christmas Day 1998, it grossed less than a quarter of 'Saving Private Ryan's' total, and while it picked up seven Oscar nominations ('Ryan' scooped 11, winning five), it never managed to get out of such a heavy shadow. Over the years, it has remained a cult classic of the genre, and several acclaimed filmmakers, including Martin Scorsese, have lauded it among their favorite flicks of the decade. And right now, you can stream 'The Thin Red Line' on Prime Video in the U.S. Unfortunately, it won't be around much longer, as it's set to be removed from the streaming service on Saturday, May 31. Here's why you need to make time to stream it before then. Based on the novel of the same name by American author James Jones, who served in the United States Army during World War II, 'The Thin Red Line' is a fictional story, but inspired by Jones' own experience during the global conflict. Set in the Pacific Theatre, it centers on Charlie Company, a group of young soldiers deployed to the island of Guadalcanal to help secure key military locations in an effort to prevent the Japanese forces from advancing further. As the true horrors and the scale of the conflict dawn on the members of Charlie Company, their reasons for enlisting fade into the background, and their battle becomes one of survival. Tight friendships are formed on the frontline as they rely on each other, and they become a band of brothers. 'The Thin Red Line' stars Sean Penn, Adrien Brody, Jim Caviezel, Ben Chaplin, George Clooney, John Cusack, John C. Reilly, Woody Harrelson, Jared Leto and John Travolta. How's that for a star-filled cast? One of my favorite war movies of all time is 'All Quiet on the Western Front,' and in many ways, 'The Thin Red Line' feels cut from the same cloth. This is a war movie where conflict is not presented as some valiant battleground where action heroes are born, but instead as a truly traumatizing nightmare that sees good men pay the ultimate price to protect others. There's no denying that it's a heavy watch. Clocking in at almost three hours, it borders on relentlessly grim on occasion, and thanks to Malick's incredible direction, you always feel right there alongside the soldiers of Charlie Company facing these unbearable horrors on the frontlines. The score by the legendary Hans Zimmer plays a huge part in making each emotional moment truly connect. Each dramatic scene is appropriately matched with a musical cue that only heightens the impact. Even better, the cast performances measure up. There's no frontrunner in the bunch, like Tom Hanks in 'Private Ryan." Instead, the focus is on the ensemble with each character bringing something to the table and leaving a mark. As noted, Martin Scorsese ranked it as his second-favorite movie of the 1990s (the very under-seen 'Horse Thief' took the top spot), while legendary film critic Gene Siskel was seriously impressed as well. 'This is the finest contemporary war film I've seen, supplanting Steven Spielberg's 'Saving Private Ryan' from earlier this year, or even Oliver Stone's 'Platoon' from 1986,' Siskel said on an episode of 'Siskel & Ebert' and awarded it the show's highest rating, two thumbs up. I implore you to give 'The Thin Red Line' a watch this week before it leaves Prime Video at the end of the month. It may not offer hours of thrilling entertainment, but it's a masterful war movie made by a director at the peak of their powers. Just remember, you've only got until May 28 to watch. Watch "The Thin Red Line" on Prime Video until May 28
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
10 soldiers receive Purple Heart for 2024 drone attack at Tower 22
The Army has awarded 10 New York Army National Guard soldiers the Purple Heart for injuries they sustained in a January 2024 drone attack while they were assigned to a U.S. military base in Jordan. The soldiers were wounded during a Jan. 28, 2024 drone attack on Tower 22 that resulted in the deaths of three Army reservists, Army Times previously reported. At least 40 troops were injured in total. Desert Storm Apache crews awarded Distinguished Flying Cross The 10 soldiers, who are assigned to the 101st Expeditionary Signal Battalion, received their medals on May 10 from unit commander Lt. Col. Darren Ketchum. 'This decoration is not sought, and it's not given lightly,' Ketchum said. 'It is earned through courage in the face of danger. Today, we recognize those who stood firm when faced with the harshest realities of combat.' The soldiers honored during the ceremony were: • Staff Sgt. David Barrientos, from Zebulon, North Carolina • Sgt. Anthony Gist, from Floral Park, New York • Sgt. Ryan Kissoon, from Richmond Hill, New York • Sgt. Guillermo Renderos, from Yonkers, New York • Sgt. Jarvis Ho So, from Brooklyn, New York • Spc. Christian Tiburcio, from Manhattan, New York • Spc. Matthew Crespo, from Brooklyn, New York • Spc. Domingo Perez, from Brooklyn, New York • Spc. Junior Clarke, from Brooklyn, New York • Spc. Michael Branch, from Brooklyn, New York 'I am honored to have received the medal, but it's never an award we wanted to get,' Sgt. Ryan Kissoon said. 'It's a sad relief we made it home that day, and others didn't.' Kissoon added that the chaplain assigned to Tower 22, Maj. Chase Wilhelm, told him something he would never forget about that day. ''We are all from different parts of the country, but we will forever be bonded by blood,'' he recalled Wilhelm saying. When the attack unfolded, 14 soldiers from the battalion's Charlie Company were at the outpost to help maintain communications, according to a release announcing the Purple Heart recipients. The drone struck a section of the base where soldiers lived. Soldiers suffered concussions and other injuries due to the blast. Platoon leader 1st Lt. Ian Gallagher said the containerized housing unit 'crinkled like a soda can' from the blast. Soldiers who were not severely injured worked to rapidly restore communications from the outpost while combat lifesaver-trained troops in the unit used aid kits to help treat other injured soldiers. Other uninjured soldiers donated blood. Charlie Company commander Capt. Paul Kramarz said the soldiers assigned to the Tower 22 base were chosen especially for the mission. 'These soldiers from Charlie Company, located at Tower 22, were a hand-selected team,' Kramarz said. 'We knew they would operate at the far reaches of our area of responsibility.'
The Hindu
01-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
Eye-openers: from Vietnam to Gaza, ways to hold power to account
On April 30, Vietnam celebrated 50 years of the reunification of the North and South after the decades-long Vietnam War ended with the government of Saigon surrendering to the North Vietnamese forces in 1975. The American entanglement in the South East Asian country began in November 1955, with the U.S. fearing a communist takeover of the South by North Vietnam. After U.S. Army troops landed in South Vietnam in 1965, it dragged on for 10 more years. By the mid and late 1960s, however, there was growing disenchantment with the war effort and the rising numbers of the dead. Stories were emanating about atrocities committed by the U.S. troops in Vietnam and anti-war protests began to grow across campuses and in cities including in the capital Washington D.C. In 1969, journalist Seymour Hersh's attention was drawn to a small news item that a certain Lieutenant William Calley had been charged with the 'murder of 102 'Oriental human beings'' in the hamlet of My Lai in Vietnam. Journalists get to work Hersh tracked Calley and other members of the 'Charlie Company' who had led the assault on March 16, 1968, and reconstructed the story of the atrocity. His book, My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and its Aftermath, is a chilling read about over-reach, and how the killing began without warning, with even women and babies not being spared. The purpose of American troops to be at My Lai that day — to stop the Vietcong troops in their tracks — wasn't served either. Hersh, like Daniel Ellsberg later with The Pentagon Papers leak, was going against the grain of what most journalists were covering on the Vietnam war. Most of them supported the 'noble cause'. The Pentagon Papers: The Secret History of the Vietnam War, by Neil Sheehan and others, first appeared as a series of articles in The New York Times in 1971, on the study, revealing in detail, 'and in the government's own words', how several U.S. administrations had blundered through a disastrous war. The study had been commissioned in 1967 by then Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara, who had created a unit in the Pentagon to 'collect as many internal documents as possible on the Vietnam War.' There were 47 volumes in all, covering all aspects of the U.S. involvement in Indochina for decades. Sheehan, a celebrated Vietnam reporter, had got wind of the study and pursued Ellsberg, a senior member of the government-funded Rand Corporation who was privy to it, to share them with him. The war finally ended in 1975, with the Pentagon Papers playing a crucial role in its closure. Bearing witness In the face of fierce opposition in the late 1960s, philosopher and writer Bertrand Russell, then in his nineties, brought together prominent cultural and political personalities to 'bear witness to unrestrained American military action' in Vietnam. In his book, Vietdamned, Clive Webb brings to light the peace activism of Russell and other luminaries of the literary world including Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Peter Weiss to end the war. They were derided for their activism but Webb sees the tribunal as a cautionary tale and writes about it as a reminder of the 'ruthlessness with which politicians and the press attempted to discredit their evidence, and the lessons to be learned about our continued need to hold to account those in power.' That's what journalist Omar El Akkad does in his recent book, One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This. He wonders aloud why the U.S. and the West have been largely immune to the unimaginable suffering of civilians in Gaza unleashed by Israel since the October 7 Hamas attack. In chapters with titles including Departure, Witness, Fear, Resistance, Language, Arrival, Akkad tries to make sense of the happenings in Gaza; why, for instance, was an 18-month-old found with a bullet wound to the forehead. The Egyptian-Canadian journalist and writer watched the Gulf War on CNN — 'Baghdad cityscapes detonating sporadically in balls of pale white light' — and was soon surprised that there was no reaction at all. 'It was just what happened to certain places, to certain people: they became balls of pale white light. What mattered was, it wasn't us.' As a journalist, Akkad has travelled to several countries in West Asia and also to Afghanistan, and his view on political malice is fierce: 'Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.' The Gaza tragedy Things came crashing down after October 2023, he writes, when Israel with the support of a vast majority of the Western world's political power centres enacted a 'campaign of active genocide' against the Palestinian people, documented for posterity. More than 50,000 people have died, thousands injured and millions displaced. Death by disease and famine stalks a population wilfully denied aid and medical help. 'Over and over, residents were ordered from their neighbourhoods into 'safe zones', and then wiped out.' Akkad is scathing when he writes that 'once far enough removed, everyone will be properly aghast that any of this was allowed to happen. But for now, it's so much safer to look away.' The antidote, of course, is to 'slip the leash' as Wilfred Burchett put it when he fled from the embedded journalists with Allied forces in Japan in 1945 and set out for Hiroshima. He then went on to record the annihilation he witnessed after the atomic bombing and despatched his piece with the words: 'I write this as a warning to the world' (Tell Me No Lies/Ed. John Pilger).
American Press
27-04-2025
- General
- American Press
Ceremony set to honor Elton native killed in Vietnam War
Specialist 4 Albert 'Billy' Sonnier was killed killed in the infamous Battle of Ia Drang during the Vietnam War. (Special to the American Press) Final preparations are underway for next Saturday's event to honor an Elton native killed in the infamous Battle of Ia Drang during the Vietnam War. A ceremony honoring Specialist 4 Albert 'Billy' Sonnier will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday, May 3, at the Vietnam War Memorial at the Louisiana Oil and Gas Park in Jennings. 'We encourage everyone from the area to attend so we can give Spec. 4 Sonnier the honor and respect he deserves for his service and ultimate sacrifice,' organizer John Semmes said. Semmes, a Vietnam veteran and part of a local Vietnam veterans project team, discovered Sonnier's name on the memorial last year and sought out Sonnier's family. This led to locating Sonnier's grave and fundraising for a memorial marker at St. Joseph Catholic Church Cemetery in Elton. Sonnier died Nov. 15, 1965 at the age of 24 during the Battle of Ia Drang at Landing Zone (LZ) X-Ray – one of the most famous battles in the storied history of the 1st Cavalry Division and the first major battle of the Vietnam War. The battle was covered by war correspondent Joe Galloway, who co-authored 'We Were Soldiers Once ….and Young' with retired Lt. Gen. Hal Moore. It was adapted into the 2002 film, 'We Were Soldiers.' Sonnier was a rifleman assigned to Charlie Company, 1st Battalion of the 7th Cavalry, 1st Air Cavalry Division. The company suffered 68 casualties, with 42 killed in action and 26 wounded, from a fighting force of 106 men. Six of the 42 fallen troopers, including Sonnier, posthumously received the Purple Heart and Bronze Star for valor. 'This is why the fulfillment of God's purpose sometimes calls for the ultimate sacrifice of our most precious treasure,' then Army Chief of Staff Gen. Harold Johnson wrote in a letter to Sonnier's mother after his death. 'For his gift of life, your son is forever noble among men.' The ceremony is expected to be one of the most historic military events for Southwest Louisiana, according to Semmes. 'It will be a ceremonial event, but will be memorable for those soldiers – all of whom are in their 80s now, and for the young people participating in the ceremony who will get to interface with these soldiers,' Semmes said. 'But we want to make sure this is memorable for everybody and make sure these guys get the recognition they deserve.' Honored guests will include Medal of Honor recipient retired U.S. Army Col. Walter 'Joe' Marm, along with seven other LZ X-Ray veterans, including three Purple Heart recipients. Former Louisiana Veterans Affairs secretary and retired Col. Joey Strickland, who served two tours of combat duty in Vietnam, will be the keynote speaker. Sonnier's sisters, JoAnn White, who was a teenager when he died, and Sandria Doyle, who was 10 at the time, will also be in attendance. Other participants include Sea Cadets from Lake Charles; Daxton Broussard, a student at Iota High School; Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 215 of Kinder; LZ X-Ray veteran Nathan Harvey; Thomas Barrett; Deputy Director of Louisiana's Veterans Affairs Dr. Jerome Buller; Vietnam veteran Wayne Milner; Kenzlie Duhon and Nolan Knight, students at Jennings High School. Several participants will be in Vietnam-era military uniforms. Author Dave Precht, a 1967 graduate of Jennings High School, will deliver two speeches. Precht has authored three books and was heavily involved in two others in the 'Brothers Beyond the Perimeter' series of books based on local Vietnam veterans. He hopes to complete a final book on local Vietnam service personnel by November. 'We are very fortunate that he (Precht) has volunteered his time and talent to make sure all these veterans and their deeds and service are finally getting acknowledged,' Semmes said. A shadow box of Sonnier's service medals will be presented to his sisters. Leather-bound autographed copies of the 'We Were Soldiers' book and special emblems will also be presented to the LZ X-Ray veterans attending the ceremony, which will include music, flag presentation, a three-gun volley, the sounding of 'Taps,' and a Fallen Warrior display.
