From the Hollywood desk

Given the film industry's high stakes, and the players' super-size egos, it's no wonder that Hollywood is a perpetual war zone. But the latest burst of warfare isn't taking place in the offices of studio executives or in the dressing trailer of some spoiled star. It's happening on the screen where World War II is, once again, a hot topic.

REVIEWS BY PAT H. BROESKE

Leading the army of upcoming titles is Saving Private Ryan from DreamWorks, directed by Steven Spielberg. Say what you will about Spielberg (and his movies do have their critics), he is nonetheless famed for shaping public taste, infatuation, and interests. Consider such indelible screen icons as that relentless shark, that adorable extra-terrestrial, and the adventurous Indiana Jones. Of course, Spielberg also has a "serious" side. And so, the man who won an Academy Award for his direction of the affecting concentration camp drama, Schindler's List, now directs his attention to the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944 -- aka, D-Day -- and an absorbing fictional quest involving a stranded paratrooper.

Loosely inspired by a real-life wartime incident, which was memorialized in the 1944 movie, The Fighting Sullivans -- about five American brothers who died together when their cruiser was sunk in the South Pacific -- the Spielberg film is about a squadron, led by (captain) Tom Hanks, who must find the missing Private Ryan (Matt Damon). The reason: three of Ryan's brothers have already died in battle and the War Department doesn't want his family to lose their fourth and final son. A saga of duty and honor written for the screen, the Saving Private Ryan novelization is by Max Allan Collins.


Meanwhile, plenty of war stories are finding their inspiration in novels, such as James Dickey's riveting To the White Sea, currently in development at Universal Pictures. Similar in tone to the Dickey classic, Deliverance, it is a story of survival -- at all costs -- in which an American tail gunner, who is shot down over Japan during the final months of the war, ruthlessly makes his way across enemy terrain, heading north, to freedom.


Five Past Midnight is also set during the final days of the war -- but in this thriller, a commando is on the trail of Adolf Hitler. His mission: to assassinate Der Fuhrer. Written by James Stewart Thayer, this one is being developed by ER's handsome star, George Clooney, who has a production deal at Warners.


Speaking of Clooney, he's part of an all-star cast, including Sean Penn, Woody Harrelson, John Cusack, Nick Nolte, and John Travolta (who seems to be in everything), that will be seen in the Twentieth Century-Fox adaptation of James Jones's The Thin Red Line. About the men of C-for-Charlie company, during and after the brutal, bloody battle of Guadalcanal, this book has long been hailed as a masterwork -- along with Jones's From Here to Eternity. As movie lovers know, the latter led to the 1953 film which won eight Oscars, including Best Picture. Forever immortalized by its wave-swept love scene between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr, it is also famous for its casting of Frank Sinatra as the scrappy soldier, Maggio. Sinatra -- whose career was then shaky -- wound up winning an Academy Award, and enjoying a career comeback. Proof that war is swell -- when it's Hollywoodized.


Pat H. Broeske regularly writes about the film industry for publications such as Entertainment Weekly and The Hollywood Reporter.

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