MASH
In 1968 Richard Hooker (a pen-name) published a book titled "
MASH: A novel about three army doctors". Two years later it was released on the big screen as a feature film, and two years after that it was released on the small screen as a TV series.
Like many people, I grew up with the TV series, which ran for 11 seasons and became one of the most popular TV shows in the English-speaking world. So this has probably tainted my opinion of the movie a bit, but it's hard to gauge by how much. In short, I wasn't too taken by the movie.
The movie is about the 4077 MASH unit in Korea. Lt Col. Henry Blake has asked for a couple of extra surgeons and they arrive together in a jeep - Captn.s 'Hawkeye' Pierce and 'Duke' Forrest. They are billeted in the Bachelor Officers Quarters - later renamed The Swamp - with Maj. Frank Burns. When they first meet him he is teaching a Korean boy - Ho-Jon - to read, by having Ho-Jon read the bible. Burns is very religious, and his loud praying irritate his tent-mates. He's also incompetent as a doctor, and blames his mistakes on others.
Maj. Margaret O'Houlihan arrives on base as Chief Nurse and, being regular army, thinks that Burns is the ants-pants, and despite there not being any lead-up, they pair up together as an item.
Halfway through the film Hawkeye and Duke tell Henry the camp needs a chestcutter, and one appears in the form of 'Trapper' John MacIntyre. The three of them team up and antagonise Burns until he eventually attacks one of them, and then Burns gets kicked out of camp.
Brigadier-General Hammond has been running inter-hospital football games and been betting on the outcome - his team has been stacked with good players so he's been making a bit of money from the winnings. He convinces Henry to put forward a team for competition. Hawkeye suggests Henry request a neurosurgeon - Oliver Jones - for the camp; Jones used to play professional football, and was known as 'Spearchucker' because he used to throw the javelin prior to that. Needless to say, the 4077 wins the game and the pot.
The movie finishes with Hawkeye and Duke leaving together in a jeep after their deployment finishes.
This could have been a better movie, but there were several things I didn't like about it. Firstly, there didn't appear to be much of a plot, and the storyline was very thin - it was more a series of stories or events, unrelated to each other apart from the environment they were in. This might be the result of simply following the book to closely. There was also a number of scenes set in crowded places - the mess tent, the operating room etc. where it was hard to follow the conversation because of all the other conversations, or background conversations, which were at the same level as the main dialogue.
The acting was pretty good though; the movie stars Donald Sutherland (Hawkeye), Tom Skerritt (Duke), Robert Duvall (Burns), Sally Kellerman (O'Houlihan) and Elliott Gould (Trapper John).
And for a number of the actors this was their first movie: Gary Burghoff played Radar, and went on to play him in the TV series too; a young Rene Auberjonois played Father Mulcahy; Jo-anne Pflug appeared as Lt Dish; and John Schuck as 'Painless' Waldowski, the camp dentist.
However, my dim view of the movie was not shared by the critics - it won an Oscar for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium, a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical, and Robert Altman (the director), Sally Kellerman, Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland either won or were nominated for a number of other awards including a Palm D'or for Altman.
As I said at the start of this rant, my views of the movie may have been negatively biased due to 40 years exposure to the TV series, so I strongly suggest anyone else who's interested to have a look at the movie and see what they think.
5/10
Hix