Fight has two sides: `Rough Riders' risesabove mere jingoism
( The Dallas Morning News ) Manuel Mendoza / Staff Critic of The Dallas Morning News; 07-20-1997
Movie director John Milius is known for his macho view of war, so it was easy to expect that Rough Riders, his four-hour miniseries for the TNT cable network, would be an exercise in jingoism.
Fortunately, the man behindsuch relentlessly pro-American films as Red Dawn and The Wind and the Lion is as concerned with depicting the price of war as he is with showing its triumphs.
Mr. Milius' version of the Spanish-American War, the United States' first major foreign intervention, displays the carnage and chaos of the 1898 fight for Cuba so clearly that no one will walk away unmoved.
Of course, Rough Riders - commissioned by Ted Turner, a man who still insists on leading fans of his Atlanta Braves in the tomahawk chop - is not all nuance. Patriotic music often swells, and the tension among the criminals, cowboys and Fifth Avenue scions who fought side by side is downplayed.
Yet largely due to battle scenes that don't shy away from showing brutality up close, and career performances from Tom Berenger (Platoon, The Dogs of War) and Chris Noth (Law & Order), Rough Riders emerges as both cautionary and celebratory. And it's wonderfully entertaining to boot.
As a fast-talking, overbearing and somewhat kooky version of Teddy Roosevelt, Mr. Berenger - who's also one of the miniseries' producers - erases his tough-guy image. Describing his performance as scenery- chewing would be an understatement; he stomps around like a little kid dying to play war, only to learn that the consequences can be devastating.
"We'd be fighting half the world if you were president," a senator tells Roosevelt as the young assistant secretary of the Navy triesto whip up support for an invasion of Cuba.
Roosevelt's response: "The president has the backbone of a chocolate eclair."
But later, when his ragtag crew suffers its first casualties at the hands of the Spanish, Roosevelt is taken aback, stumbling around camp with his head hung. And when the final charge up San Juan Hill results in heavy losses, he has to fight back tears. War, for him, turns out to be a sobering experience.
Even more than Roosevelt, Mr. Noth's Craig Wadsworth - a rich kid and the country's top polo player - acts as the series' conscience. Part of a group of wealthy New Yorkers given to quoting the St. Crispin' s Day speech from Shakespeare's Henry V, they join the Rough Riders to prove something to themselves and their families. Wads-worth, the most reluctant, comes to illustrate the dark side of war-making.
"Now, I'm a murderer," he says after the group's first skirmish with the Spanish. "There's nothing manly about it. I'm filled with guilt. I feel sick, foul. I feel dirty."
Other noteworthy performances are given by Gary Busey as "Fighting" Joe Wheeler, a congressman and former Confederate general who loves the taste of battle; George Hamilton as cynical newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who uses his position to promote the war; and Sam Elliott as Capt. Bucky O'Neill, an Arizona county sheriff with a killer reputation who leads the training of the Rough Riders.
Adam Storke as Red Badge of Courage author Stephen Crane, who comes to Cuba to document the war, also lights up the screen. He plays Crane as a melancholy drug addict and alcoholic who is converted into a poetry-spouting patriot by what he sees on the battlefield.
Ileana Douglas (Cape Fear, To Die For) is adequate as Roosevelt' s wife, Edith, though her working-class New York accent keeps slipping through her character's upper-crust one. And Brian Keith, in his last role, makes a cameo as President William McKinley.
Sunday night's Part I covers Roosevelt's campaign to win support for an attack on the Spanish in Cuba, the blowing-up of the USS Maine, the gathering of troops from all over the country and all walks of life and the arrival in Cuba. Monday's Part II is wall-to-wall battles.
Through it all, Mr. Milius shoots for accuracy. Except for the taking of San Juan Hill, which took weeks, not hours, he doesn't skirt history in the name of cheerleading for our side.
He even questions why the United States was in Cuba. Was the Maine really sunk by the Spaniards? Was the war as much about commerce as freedom?
Rough Riders gets corny at times, and Mr. Milius, who also wrote the screenplay, decided against humanizing the Spanish in any way or exploring the help that the Riders received from a black regiment. They are shown only briefly.
But the miniseries is poignant anyway because Mr. Milius is so adept at depicting the battles on a human scale. His camera easily segues from wide-scope shots of the often disorganized fighting and close--ups of the soldiers shooting, sweating and reacting to the killing of their compatriots. He makes you feel as if you're right there with them.
"Ain't it funny how when a growed-up man, when he dying, how he cry for his wife and mama?" a black soldier says. "It don't matter how brave he is or what he done. He's sweet again, just like a little child."
© 1997 The Dallas Morning News All Rights Reserved.
Manuel Mendoza / Staff Critic of The Dallas Morning News, Fight has two sides: `Rough Riders' risesabove mere jingoism. , The Dallas Morning News, 07-20-1997, pp 1C.