Customer Reviews

The Fourth War [VHS]

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The best element of this movie is the vintage Porsche 356
which Scheider's colonel character drives. Stanton's general
is totally miscast, but his acting is superb. What really
irked me was the failure to set the scene to at least look
something like Germany. Other than some snow and evergreens,
it was obviously filmed in the states or maybe Canada. The roads
and building types are all wrong. Ignoring all the negatives,
this movie is still quite entertaining. Stanton's character

saved it.

I purchased the 'Forth War' because I am a fan of Jurgen Prochnow and I am something of a Cold War scenario romantic. Jurgen's acting is less credible in 'The Fourth War' than in his other movies such as 'Dune' and 'Das Boot' and the same could be said for Scheider. This is not a movie about acting ability. Nor it the plot overly convincing. Actually it becomes rather comical and ridiculous. As I continued to watch, it progressively degraded into a 'Red Scorpion' type war flick. You know the type: lame attempts to turn normal helicopters into helicopter gunships by slinging on gigantic rocket pods (I'll give them credit for using a Russian Mi-4 Hound Helicopter at least!), hung-ho military lingo that doesn't quite cut it, lame jokes, that annoying dubbed on machine gun bullet sound, out of sync recoil from guns etc. One thing however, no one gets killed in this movie so it doesn't stoop to the level where incompetent Russian soldiers are gunned down with relative impunity. To sum this film up - It's a cheap copy of Rambo but doesn't quite deliver the same degree of action. Watch-able if you are a demented sicko like me who actually can enjoy such crap!

I have been a huge fan of Jurgen Prochnow and here is another great performance, and Roy Schnieder puts on a good show as well. Sometimes the movie can get a little bit silly, but everything makes up for it.

I first saw this film several years ago. It's about two soldiers, a Russian and an American, stationed on either side of the iron curtain in Czechoslovakia. They start a war of wills that nearly escalates into a major military confrontation. I thought it was excellent, and suspenseful to the very end.

Unable to accept their new role in the era of Glasnost, a US colonel and his Russian counterpart stationed on a remote spot along the West German-Czechoslovakian border find themselves escalating a border incident into a private war in an attempt to define their identity and justify their existence in a world that is rapidly outgrowing them.

Looks great on paper, doesn't it?

In former triumphs such as Seven Days in May and The Manchurian Candidate, director John Frankenheimer at his best had shown himself a master of both the military mindset and the political thriller, so you could be forgiven for having high expectations for The Fourth War. But Frankenheimer's best work was back in the sixties and he was a distinctly on-off director since Black Sunday in 1976. Good little films like 52 Pickup and Year of the Gun have alternated with outright stinkers like The Holcroft Covenant, with his directorial style proving similarly erratic.

Sadly, this ill-starred effort is right down in the gutter with the worst of them. All the tell-tale signs of one of his off-days are here, not least some very weird camerawork and some painfully missed cues. But the real weakness lies with the script.

The idea is intriguing but is never properly developed. Instead it opts for stock situations and dialogue that even in 1990 was well past its sell-by date as this metaphor. Lara Harris' role is as unconvincing as her performance, while Prochnow remains a cipher, relegated to the background for most of the running time - a tragedy for the film, since his credible performance is its sole real asset. A brilliant actor at his considerable best, he never really got a decent English-speaking role.

Even the reliable Roy Scheider, more like a professional lawyer than a professional soldier, and Harry Dean Stanton, reduced to an unconvincing and surprisingly stilted Robert Mitchum impersonation, disappoint. Moments almost work, usually when the adversaries' confrontations are deprived of dialogue, and it often looks good. But it is never more than the kind of bad movie that makes for a good trailer: what's there just isn't enough for more than a soundbite File under major missed opportunity.

If you are a cold war film buff then you might like this just to be a completist but for general viewing it stinks! Forget it! It is just too contrived both in terms if plot and action. The fight scene, for example. No one would be able to stand all those hits and still be able to fight and what was all that when Schneider floats under the ice and pops up ready to fight again. Some of what you show has to be at least a little believable. This isn't! It has a cold war theme but it is, just as another reviewer says, just a Rambo spin off.

Seeing this movie around 2 in the morning on Bravo, it caught my interest for a little while. But, the most intresting thing, besides seeing Roy Scheider make an enemy tower combust with the aid of keresone, was his amazing ability to look like a toad. The main reason was his mouth, I guess. How could anyone take this man seriously in combat??? I would probably bust out laughing when encountered with his amphibian-like physique. It was and ok movie, but like a lot of other ones I have seen.