Movie Reviews

Looking For a Binge-Watching Series on Memorial Day? Look No Further

Memorial Day preparations and programs are all going non-stop this weekend. In our small bucolic town in Central Massachusetts, our schools have all put together very nice programs to honor those members of our country who have paid the ultimate sacrifice. Our high school put together a nice program where the students researched town members who had been killed in World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and the Global War on Terror. They then read a brief bio on each to hit home the high cost of our freedoms.

Our vets from the local Veterans Council, VFW, American Legion, the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and Cub Scouts, as well as local citizens, went into our local cemeteries, placed flags on all of the military graves recently. Then we placed wreaths on all of the monuments around town.

Our local Memorial Day ceremonies will kick off at 8:20 today. Once that is over, we’ll partake in the traditional Memorial Day activities by grilling some food outside while giving thanks to those who made this all possible.

One of the other traditional fares on Memorial Day is the War Film marathons that are always on television. We’ve compiled a list of our favorites in the past, however, this year, we’re going to recommend a mini-series to binge watch and if you can last thru the entire thing, it will take some time.

Ken Burns produced some outstanding mini-series on PBS, his one of the Civil War back in 1990 was a classic. He later did one on Baseball in 1994 that was another must watch. But the one we’re recommending everyone dust off on Netflix is his marathon documentary on World War II, simply called ‘The War’.

Burns made this one in 2007 and it took six years of research to put together. Critics panned it because they said he tried to make it sound like the United States won the war alone. That is hogwash, Burns just eschewed the big picture and focused on the regular small town people of four communities and how the war was seen and felt down in Waterbury, Connecticut, Mobile, Alabama, Luverne, Minnesota, and Sacramento, California.

I was out of the country when it first aired and I missed it. It was put on my list of things to see but I never got around to watching it. Recently we saw it on Netflix and binge-watched the entire 15 or so hours over one weekend. And we were glad we did.

At the end of World War II, Eric Sevareid had reported to the people of the United States what he saw during the war years but after the war was over, he felt like he …and others like him failed to bring the true cost of it home. He wrote:

“Only the soldier really lives the war. The journalist does not — war happens inside a man — and that is why, in a certain sense, you and your sons from the war will be forever strangers. If, by the miracles of art and genius, in later years two or three among them can open their hearts and the right words come, then perhaps we shall all know a little of what it was like — and we shall know then that all the present speakers and writers hardly touched the story.”

What Burns showed in this masterpiece of filmmaking was while we all get to know several small-town Americans during the seven episodes, there is nothing ordinary about any of them. This isn’t a glossed over, sanitized version of World War II but a true first-hand look at the ugliness and cost of sending an entire generation off to war.

Burns often shows the brutality and the gruesome nature of how the war was conducted. With some never seen before footage. Troops being starved and beaten on the Bataan Death March, Japanese troops being burned alive by flamethrowers, the awful scope, and brutality of the Nazi death camps.

The remembrances of Quinten Aanonsen, a farmer’s son from Luverne are particularly poignant. He wanted to learn to fly to escape the family farm. He became a pilot of a P-47 Thunderbolt and as a close ground support squadron member, he saw up close what the awesome firepower of “the Jug” could bring on the enemy. He also watched many of his friends die. The girl he met while in flight school and their letters back and forth kept his sanity.

Two of the people who appear in the film have written books and they give a great look at the war in Europe and the Pacific. Paul Fussell was in the infantry fighting the Germans in France and Germany and his book “Doing Battle” was a definite page-turner. E.B Sledge from Mobile wrote the fantastic book, “With the Old Breed.”

“Something in me died at Peleliu,” Sledge wrote. “Possibly I lost faith that politicians in high places who do not have to endure war’s savagery will ever stop blundering and sending others to endure it.”

The film also shares the plight of Japanese-Americans who were uprooted from their homes and ordered to internment camps. Then asked to serve the very country that treated them and their families as the enemy.

The treatment of the blacks both in the war factories and in the military gets spared nothing either. One of the more telling moments was that of a black Marine who was wounded and transported to a hospital ship, the only black man on board. And the ship’s barber refused to cut his hair.

“The War” is marvelously filmed with some outstanding action shots, the personal stories are both riveting and at times both funny and sad. And the narration by Keith David, who did the older Navy recruiting films, is first rate.

Take the time to watch “The War” which Burns brilliantly put together and when you see one of those bent-over WWII vets today, shake his hand and wish him well. After all, “The War” is their story.

Photo of US Pilot Quinten Aanonsen: PBS

Catch-22 Comes Close But Doesn’t Quite Stick the Landing

George Clooney takes on Joseph Heller’s dark, satirical novel that he penned in 1961, starring in it, directing two of the series six episodes and producing it as well. Trying to reproduce Catch-22 is no easy feat although the insanity of war and the weird characters that war produces lend itself well to the insanity we see on a daily basis today.

Unlike the novel, and the 1970 film that was directed by Mike Nichols, Clooney and his writers take on a more linear approach and play the events in more chronological order, something Heller himself disapproved of. In an interview he did with Rolling Stone back in the day, he said: “Put the events in chronological order, and you’ll find an uneventful story about a bombardier and a colonel who wants his men to fly more missions than anyone else.”

The problem with it is, like many adaptations, if you have read the book and remember it well, then you’ll be on the fence with it. Filmed mainly in Italy, where Clooney reportedly spends much of his time, the cinematography has a sepia-toned, dusty feel for the B-25 bases during the war.

The cast is excellent. Clooney as the mugging General Scheisskopf (Shithead) who rises from Lieutenant to Lieutenant General is a perfect foil. Kyle Chandler is outstanding as Colonel Cathcart, the tough-talking, an often idiotic commander who keeps raising mission-counts to buck for a promotion. Martin Balsam played the role brilliantly in the 1970 version. But if anything Chandler outdoes him. Hugh Laurie (House), and Daniel David Stewart as the uber-capitalist Milo Minderbinder, who is out to make a profit and doesn’t care where, whether it be from the Allied side or even the Germans. It was a not-so-subtle jab at firms like Haliburton et al in today’s world.

But the film revolves around Yossarian, the bombardier who’s only mission of note is to get out of the war at any price. He’s expertly played by Christopher Abbott. Yossarian takes everything about the war personally and his only way is to complete his mission total. But with the rising mission counts frustrating him, he seeks to plead insanity in a war gone insane that is run by lunatics straight out of the insane asylum.

But, says the camp doctor Daneeka, who delivers his lines like a military Groucho Marx, played well by Grant Heslov, who also directed two of the episodes there is a catch….Catch-22.

“Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat isn’t really crazy, so I can’t ground him,” says Daneeka.

“Ok, let me see if I’ve got this straight,” asks Yossarian. “In order to be grounded, I’ve got to be crazy. And I must be crazy to keep flying. But if I ask to be grounded, that means I’m not crazy anymore, and I have to keep flying.”

“You got it, that’s Catch-22,” says Daneeka. “Whoo… That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” Yossarian says… “It’s the best there is,” deadpans Doc Daneeka adds.

Giancarlo Giannini is perfectly cast as the old Italian pimp where the horny GIs like to spend as much time as possible. His lines, as a survivor of Italy’s long list of glorious losses in war, are perfectly delivered.

The bombing runs where Yossarian has a non-obstructed, first-hand view of the war, are something that is both beautiful and terrifying. One of my bucket list things to do was to fly in the nose (bombardier position) of a B-17. Of course, flying there in wartime is a very different proposition.

And every time Yossarian flies another mission, it takes a little piece of his own sanity with it. The officers who are insistent on sending the pilots up in the sky full of death are immune to both their suffering and the horrors of it, safely remaining on the ground. And while their bombastic aura of dealing with subordinates is tough sounding, they show their true colors when dealing with superiors of their own.

While satire is often hard to capture on the small screen, the funny lines are often too drawn out and could have benefitted from more snappy timing.

This series with the insanity that is war and the larger insanity of those behind it will lend itself well to the current events as the United States, already in endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, while still actively engaged in Syria and elsewhere is rattling its saber with Iran, Venezuela, North Korea and elsewhere.

Hulu, which released “Catch-22” on Friday, is taking aim at both Netflix and Amazon Prime with their original productions put out a worthy effort here. You will enjoy it without being wowed. It is good, because of the stellar cast but just misses hitting it out of the park.

Photo: Hulu

“Saving Private Ryan” Re-released for the 75th Anniversary of D-Day

One of the biggest blockbuster war films is being re-released for the 75th anniversary of the D-Day Normandy invasion of France. Steven Spielberg’s classic “Saving Private Ryan” is being brought back in 600 theaters nationwide for just two days, June 2 and June 5 at 3 and 7 p.m. on those days to commemorate the Normandy landings.

It is hard to believe that Spielberg’s masterpiece is turning 21 this year. Released in 1998, the film had an absolutely stellar cast including Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Tom Sizemore, Barry Pepper, Edward Burns, Giovanni Ribisi, Vin Diesel, and Adam Goldberg. The gritty and graphic filming, especially during the opening minutes showed the ugliness and realism of the awfulness of real combat.

The film begins with the Rangers of the 2nd Battalion coming ashore at Normandy. They were in the worst possible position in any of the beaches, code-named Omaha. The Germans held the high ground on the beaches and had plenty of prepared positions manned by a seasoned, well-trained and led division.

“Ryan’s” opening beach sequence which takes about 28 minutes was brilliantly filmed where the absolute chaos of combat meets up with coherence of the troops trying to complete their assigned missions. This was no sanitized Hollywood version of the invasion. Spielberg spared no details as bodies and body parts were flung in the air from mortar rounds, machine guns ripped bodies to shreds and entrails were strewn about from the German guns.

Spielberg takes the audience out of their seats as just bystanders and puts their asses right in the surf of the Channel. They are instantly transported to 1944 and put right in the action with the infantry. So intense was the filming of this sequence, that many World War II veterans who had been to Normandy for the actual invasion, got symptoms of PTSD from watching the film and triggering memories of their own experiences.

That opening sequence was filmed in Curracloe, Ireland over 15 days and cost over $12 million dollars to film.

Spielberg’s story begins after the Rangers led Hanks and Sizemore survive the opening day of the invasion and get tasked to venture far inland to find a paratrooper (Damon) of the 101st Airborne, who lost all of his brothers in combat and to be sent home. As Hanks’ men die one by one while attempting to find and then rescue Ryan, they’re left wondering if all of that sacrifice for the purpose of saving one man’s life is worth it.

Saving Private Ryan was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and ended up winning five, for Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing. It made $481 million dollars in 1998. In today’s dollars, it would equate to earning nearly $750 million. In 2014, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

For more information about the re-release and to find out the times and locations for “Saving Private Ryan” is playing on the 2nd and 5th of June, visit the Fathom Events website.

Our only wish is that the re-release would be extended to cover Memorial Day as well.

Photo: Paramount Studio Still

Release of Film Combat Obscura Draws Marine Corps’ Ire

Over at NEWSREP in a report written by Stavros Atlamazoglou, he’s saying the Marine Corps is not happy with the way that the Marines were depicted in the film Combat Obscura by former Marine and current Columbia University film student Jacob Lagoze.

In the film, where Lagoze and several other combat cameramen were attached to the Marine infantry battalion during a deployment in Afghanistan, they filmed the troops in the act of some very questionable activities. So much so that the Corps tried to block the release of the film.

U.S. Marines filling their cigarettes with Afghan hash or smoking marijuana while on guard duty. Profound language and unprofessional behavior. Extreme violence. “Combat Obscura” is certainly not your average recruiting film. And that’s the reason why the United States Marine Corps (USMC) doesn’t want you to watch it.
This war documentary was filmed and directed by Lance Cpl. Jacob Miles Lagoze, a former combat videographer and current film student of Columbia University School of the Arts. Lagoze and his fellow combat cameramen were attached to the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines and followed their infantry brethren during an arduous 2011 deployment in Helmand Province. Helmand, situated in southern Afghanistan, is considered one of the toughest places in country because it’s the spiritual home of the Taliban movement. It also contains vast poppy fields used to produce drugs, which complicates the situation on the ground and makes it that much harder for coalition troops to operate. Two huge bases were constructed in Helmand: the U.K.’s Camp Shorabak (formerly Bastion); and the U.S.’s Camp Leatherneck.
“Combat Obscura” triggered an angry response from the USMC. For months, it tried to block the film’s release, citing that it utilizes unauthorized U.S. Department of Defense footage. “The actions depicted in the film of these few betrayed the trust and safety of their fellow Marines; they selfishly put their own self-interests over their unit, and by doing so put their entire team at risk,” said Major Brian Block, a USMC spokesperson, as interviewed by Task & Purpose.
“While we contend that at least some of the content of the film — produced with Marine Corps equipment, during a Marine Corps deployment, and not cleared for public release by any official release authority — is rightly the property of the U.S. Government, we do not plan to pursue any legal action against Mr. Lagoze at this time,” added Major Block, implying to the potential public-relations backlash that would stem from such an action.

To read the entire article click here:

Photo: YouTube

Triple Frontier, An Action-Packed, Thriller About SOF Guys on the Edge

Art imitating life? The latest action film to come out on Netflix is a must-see, big-budget production directed by J.C. Chandor, who also co-wrote the script. It has a big name, an outstanding cast including Ben Affleck, Oscar Issac, Charlie Hunnam, Gareth Hedlund, Pedro Pascal, and Reynaldo Gallegos, and an intriguing story.

The story is about a bunch of disgruntled ex-Special Operations soldiers who decide to risk it all, using their hard-won talents to benefit themselves. They take down a drug lord’s home deep in the jungle of the lawless Triple Border region where Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina come together.

But getting the money and getting away with it are two entirely different things. When their survival is on the line, they’re tempted to turn on each other…hmm. That rings a bit close to the true events that we’ve seen in other news.

The action scenes in the film and this IS an action film are very well shot as well as very intense. That should please the fans of the action genre as well as the exquisite scenery. Parts of the film were done in Colombia and other parts in Hawaii.

These ex-Special Operations troops, experiencing a post-military life that isn’t treating them particularly well, something that has been a frequent issue with our Global War on Terror (GWOT) veterans. Affleck (Redfly), plays a bored unsuccessful real estate broker, selling seedy condos in Florida. He’s split from his wife and doesn’t have the greatest relationship with his daughter. He even drinks and drives while taking his daughter to school.

Hunnam (Ironhead) gives lectures to SOF troops nearing their ETS date, encouraging them to stay in the military with the enthusiasm of someone going to the dentist. Hedlund plays Hunnam’s brother who now competes in MMA fighting. The two are instantly believable as a brother tandem and their scenes together are superb.

Pascal plays “Catfish” a former pilot who lost his license for running coke. They’re all struggling in their own way after life in the military although they’re still all close. Enter Isaac, who plays Pope, the only member of the group who is still in the game. Isaac as most of our readers know, played the hotshot pilot “Poe” in the Star Wars, Last Jedi film.

The film starts with Pope in a helicopter, while listening to Metallica ( I can relate), on his way to raid a drug dealer’s lair in the middle of a town. Pope is an advisor to a host nation counter-narcotics police unit.

All hell breaks loose and the action takes off as they take it down, but hardly cleanly. Pope then appears back in the states and tries to recruit his friends to join him in taking down the main drug dealer’s lair where he has millions of dollars stashed because he ostensibly doesn’t trust banks or believe in laundering his money offshore…okay.

Pope is aided by his informant Yovanna, played by Adria Arjona. Her part is basically to be shown running around while looking insanely hot in every scene. But her character development, as well as the others, is lacking. We really don’t know her motivation to stick her neck out for Pope, although it is hinted that the two are romantically involved.

It is surprising, and perhaps shouldn’t be, easy for Pope to talk his former mates into betraying their ethos as Special Operators and conducting themselves outside the law this time. Granted there is a large amount of money involved, and we are to believe that the country hasn’t given our veterans here a fair shake, but the gray area where their former patriotism is cast aside seemed a bit too easy. But again… maybe it isn’t so believable these days.

Of course, all hell breaks loose once they decide to go thru with the operation and they begin the raid. Chandor tries to show the thorough planning and meticulous attention to detail that Special Operations are known for, resisting the typical Hollywood image of just knuckle-dragging brutes with automatic weapons.

The action scene at the drug lord’s house is actually fairly early in the film and was the highlight of the film, the action tense and expertly filmed. While the character development was lacking in this, it is at its heart an action film. The actors are all excellent in their own right and they make this film a fun ride to watch.

We’re going to give the filmmaker a pass on how easily they portray these Special Ops vets transitioning from patriotic pipe hitters to criminals, and just sit back and watch for the finale. This is kind of a Kelly’s Heroes morphs into the GWOT generation. It isn’t perfect, but it is nonetheless an enjoyable way to spend a night at home. Now crank up the Metallica again…

The trailer can be seen here:

Photo: Netflix

Remembering Moe Berg, MLB Catcher, OSS Operative, Born March 2, 1902

Moe Berg was one of the more fascinating characters in the world of both professional baseball and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. After playing professional baseball for 15 years and coaching for two more, he joined the OSS and was an operative in Europe during the war. But prior to that, he actually spied for the United States on Japan prior to the war during a pair of “friendship tours” of Japan with fellow baseball players.

Morris (Moe) Berg was born in Harlem, NYC on March 2, 1902. When he was just four, his family moved to Newark, after his father bought a pharmacy. He graduated from Barringer High School at the age of 16 and was named to an All-Star baseball team “Dream Team” as one of Newark’s top ballplayers.

He attended New York University for a year before enrolling in Princeton. He was a captain of the Princeton baseball team and graduated with a B.A. (Bachelor of Arts), magna cum laude in modern languages. He had studied seven languages: Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Sanskrit (ancient Indian).

While playing shortstop in baseball, he and second baseman Crossan Cooper would speak in Latin in calling out their signals whenever a runner was on base. However, because of his Jewish heritage, he was never completely accepted in one of the Ivy League’s premier WASP academies.

In 1923, he signed a professional baseball contract with the Brooklyn Robins for $5000. Thus began a 15-year career in major league baseball. He was never a star, and after catching on with the Chicago White Sox in 1926, he did what at the time was unthinkable. He informed the team that he was going to skip spring training and attend Columbia Law School, in an effort to become a lawyer.

Berg languished on the bench for most of the season before injuries at catcher forced him to be placed there. He did such a good job behind the plate, that catcher became his primary position. In 1928, Berg led the Major Leagues in caught-stealing percentage (60.9). Although the game has changed drastically since then, it should just be noted that the MLB average for runners caught stealing in 2018 was just 27 percent.

Spying On Japan:

During the winter of 1932, MLB arranged for several players, including Berg to tour Japanese universities to teach the finer points of baseball. After their tour was over, while the other players returned home to the United States, Berg remained in Japan and visited other locales such as Manchuria, Shanghai, Peking, Indochina, Siam, India, Egypt, and Berlin. After returning Berg set an American League record of 117 consecutive games without an error by a catcher (since broken).

During his second trip to Japan, Berg, despite being a journeyman backup catcher was asked to be a part of an All-Star team making the rounds in Japan and playing against Japanese All-Stars. The team included such legends as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Earl Averill, Charlie Gehringer, Jimmie Foxx, and Lefty Gomez.

Berg carried a 16-mm Bell & Howell movie camera and was to ostensibly film the tour for a film company in New York. But he’d have another job to do while there in Japan. Berg addressed the Japanese in their own language as the team arrived. While in the country, the team was to play a game in Omiya. Berg, skipped that game to supposedly visit the daughter of American Ambassador Joseph Grew in St. Luke’s Hospital. While there, he snuck up on the roof and using his movie camera to film the city and harbor, providing American intelligence some valuable insight into what, to them was a total mystery.

Later reports surfaced, that has never been confirmed that Berg’s film was used by LTC Jimmy Doolittle to plan his raid of Tokyo during the war. Once again, as soon as the tour was over, Berg didn’t return to the United States, opting to travel to Moscow, Korea, and the Philippines.

As his playing career was winding down, Berg played the final five years of major league baseball playing for the Boston Red Sox. He followed that up with two more with the Red Sox as a coach. During this time, Berg, the athlete scholar who read up to 10 newspapers a day, appeared on the radio quiz show, “Information, Please”. He was a frequent guest and blew people away with his overall knowledge about a variety of subjects.

Major League Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis told him, “in just thirty minutes you did more for baseball than I’ve done the entire time I’ve been commissioner”, but not everyone was enamored with him. Casey Stengle once described Berg as “one of the strangest men to ever play baseball.”

World War II Service:

After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Berg was initially posted at a position that monitored the health of U.S. servicemen in Central and South America. But in early 1943, that all changed when he applied for and was accepted into the OSS.

Berg fit the mold perfectly that General William Donovan had for OSS, “PhDs that can win a bar fight.” Berg was a professional athlete who played 15 years in the bigs, could speak 10 languages, seven of them fluently.

Berg was assigned to the Special Operations Branch (SO). He was a paramilitary operations officer in OSS that would today be part of the CIA Special Activities Division. He was then transferred to the Secret Intelligence Branch, specifically the Balkans Desk.

Berg parachuted into Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia to evaluate the different resistance groups operating against the Germans to determine which was the strongest and which one the United States would lend more of its support. He met with both Draža Mihailović and Josip Broz Tito and got an accurate, detailed look at their different groups, deciding that Tito had a stronger and better-supported group.

From there, Berg then took part in Project Larson and Project Azusa. The mission of the first was for OSS operatives to kidnap Italian rocket scientists and bring them to the U.S. The second project had to do with the grilling of Italian physicists to see what they knew about Werner Heisenberg and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. Those two men were heading up Nazi Germany’s Nuclear Weapons project.

In December of 1944, OSS learned that Heisenberg was giving a lecture in Switzerland. Berg went there to find out if the Nazis were close to building a bomb. If that was the case, Berg’s orders were to eliminate Heisenberg. But Berg learned that Germans were not close to building a bomb and Heisenberg lived (and was resurrected by Walter White in “Breaking Bad…I digress).

After the war when OSS later became CIA, Berg tried to join and get posted to Israel but was rebuffed. He did, however, get tasked by the agency to use his old contacts in 1952 to check on the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapon program. In his debrief, the CIA agent described Berg as “flaky”.

Unfortunately, that wartime service was the high point of his life. Berg never again held a job and lived with his brother for 17 years where he was forced to evict him. Berg then lived with his sister for the final four years of his life. He died from the results of a fall at his home at the age of 70 in 1972. His ashes were spread over Mount Scopus in Jerusalem per his own request.

His true love remained baseball. He once said, he’d “rather be a ballplayer than a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court” In fact, on his death bed, his final words were asking the nurse “How did the Mets do today?”

Berg would be awarded the Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given to civilians during wartime, but he flat out refused it. After he died, his sister, Ethel, claimed the award, which she later donated to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“Mr. Morris Berg, United States Civilian, rendered exceptionally meritorious service of high value to the war effort from April 1944 to January 1946,” reads the Medal of Freedom citation. “In a position of responsibility in the European Theater, he exhibited analytical abilities and a keen planning mind. He inspired both respect and constant high level of endeavor on the part of his subordinates which enabled his section to produce studies and analysis vital to the mounting of American operations.”

A former OSS operative and later the President of the New York Yankees, Michael Burke, said Berg was the ideal operative. “Moe was absolutely ideal for undercover work. Not by design; just by nature,” he said.

“One, because of his physical attributes. He could go anyplace without fear. He had stamina. Also, he had a gift for languages. In addition, he had an alert, quick mind that could adapt itself into any new or strange subject and make him comfortable quickly.”

“He was immensely involved intellectually and active in international affairs through reading and travel. He had the capacity to be at home in Italy or France or London or Bucharest. He was on familiar ground in all those places,” Burke added. “He also possessed a great capacity for being able to live comfortably alone and could do this for a long period of time. The life of an agent sometimes is a lonely one and some people aren’t suited for that.”

Berg’s life was made into a major Hollywood film starring Paul Rudd, “The Catcher Was a Spy.” We wrote a review of that here:

Photos: Wikipedia

“When Heroes Fly” Opens Tonight on Netflix, Actors Interview

Tonight, January 10, Netflix is releasing a new series that looks to be a guaranteed hit with American audiences. The new show called “When Heroes Fly” centers around an Israeli Special Operations unit that was fighting in Lebanon in 2006. They then reunite to rescue a woman they believed to be dead, held in Colombia.

The unit is getting ready to leave Lebanon and have an exfiltration route planned to get them back in Israel where their families and lives are ready to get back to normal. But all hell breaks loose. Moving along their exfiltration route, they come across a disabled Israeli tank that is believed to be empty and the IDF air force is preparing to blow up to keep it from falling into the hands of Hamas. But when the unit finds the tank, there are two young scared crewmen still inside.

The Special Operations team gets into a fierce firefight with Hezbollah fighters that greatly outnumber them while trying to rescue some crewmen from the disabled Israeli tank. During the fighting, their commander is killed and several men wounded. The team is torn apart over it and bitter recriminations go back and forth over their decisions on that fateful night and it gets worse after they must conduct an after-action review for the Army upon returning home.

The men go their separate ways for 11 years and each is shown dealing with the stress of their war and loss in their own way until the sister of one of the team members, who was also the lover of the officer who took charge when the commander went down is seen in Colombia by one of the men while looking at a photo in a newspaper. The catch is that she supposedly died in a car crash there nine years before. And they find out that she’s being held against her will. So the commandos reunite for a final, personal rescue mission.

The team, still bitterly resentful to one another, reunite for final mission together that takes them deep into the heart of the Colombian jungle, where they soon realize that if they are to succeed in their search to find Yaeli, the missing woman each of them must first confront the trauma of their battle in Lebanon that tore them apart so many years before.

The trailer for the series can be seen below:

SpecialOperations.com was fortunate enough to sit down for a telephonic interview with the two main stars of the series, Tomer Kapon who plays Aviv Danino, the second-in-command of the Special Ops unit and who still suffers from terrible PTSD 11-years after his horrific experiences in Lebanon. And Israeli pop singer and actress Ninette Tayeb who plays Yael ‘Yaeli’ Ashkenazi, the love interest of Aviv who everyone believed killed in Colombia in a car accident nearly a decade ago. She is the pivotal character in the series that everything centers around.

While both Kapon and Tayeb are already big stars in the Israeli entertainment industry, they are both going to be well-known to American audiences as well. Besides “When Heroes Fly”, Kapon will be seen in the soon upcoming American miniseries, “The Boys” starring Karl Urban (Lord of the Rings), Jack Quaid and Karen Fukuhara (Suicide Squad). Tayeb has moved to Los Angeles and in addition to her acting career, she is kicking off her music career in the U.S. as well. She has released her first video, which was directed by her husband.

So, when we were contacted by the film company and asked if we were interested in getting a sneak peek at the series, we jumped at the chance. The Israelis are producing some excellent quality miniseries for television. “Fauda’ which centers around another Israeli Special Operations unit that goes undercover inside Gaza also starred Kapon.

The company sent us a trailer and a teaser with the entire first three episodes. While we have no idea how the show will play out, the first few hours of the series is plenty enough to hook you right in. It was the most popular new show in Israel and won the Canneseries Award at the Cannes Film Festival last April for the Best Series.

So we asked first to the both of them why they thought it was initially so successful in Israel last year. Both believed because it was so well done had a lot to do with it and the fact that it tells such a personal story for all of the actors. And the plight of the soldiers with PTSD is something that not only touches Americans but also resonates deeply with the Israelis.

With the PTSD, I asked Kapon about the scene where his character, Aviv has returned home three years later and is in the bar he owns with his girl (Tayeb). Everything is good until he sees one of the tankers they rescued, a young soldier who was shot in the head. He has a crushing flashback that sends him into a terrible depression and his life spiraling out of control. It was among the most powerful scenes in the first three episodes.

Kapon, who was an Israeli paratrooper and fought in Lebanon, knows how that would play to fellow soldiers. “Thanks, bro, it was a great scene because we were showing how everyone can be affected by PTSD.”

Tayeb’s character, Yaeli who has to try to somehow to hold Aviv and their relationship together is ripped apart by her inability to reach and ultimately help the man she loves. “I’m glad you picked up on that,” she said. “It was very intense and you are dealing with a very hurt individual. So many soldiers and their families have to deal with this. And it shows that the wounds of war are not always visible. Many times they are hidden, and that is why the character of Yaeli was so important. Because she was the woman who can bring him and all of them back.”

She said that she told the director that her role scared the shit out of her, but she wanted to not only take it on but jump in with both feet.

Tayeb who is a very accomplished singer but suffers from panic attacks allowed her husband to bring that out of her in her newest music video. We asked if she used that to pull some of her character’s felling out of the show. “Oh, you saw that? Thanks, it was similar, but obviously a very different emotional state there, I use a different emotion I think in my music,” she added.

About the series, this will relate to everyone, she says because everyone has a heart, a soul, it is so emotional she said because war is everywhere and we all know someone that has been affected like this.

I asked them about filming in Colombia and how they enjoyed their time there. “The place was magical bro,” Kapon said. “It was beautiful, so different from Israel. I loved it there.”

Tayeb agreed that it was magical. “We shot our first scenes in the jungle and I loved it,” she said. “When we arrived there, I immediately loved the place. I picked up my guitar and took off into the jungle all by myself for a while and just played and got in tune with the entire place which is unlike anything I’ve ever been.”

We asked Kapon about his latest experience filming his upcoming American feature, “it was a blast” he said. “We were filming up in Vancouver and had a great time and I think that show is going to be a good one.”

So, we asked him, can we expect some of the same edge of your seat reaction that we saw in Fauda? He said, “This is a bit of an emotional roller coaster, while Fauda dealt a lot with the action in the unit, this deals more with the characters and how they struggle to overcome their issues and how they pull together in their search for Yaeli”

We don’t want to give too much away here, because we want everyone to just enjoy the show as it unfolds. These Israeli Special Operators all get a second chance to find the peace that has eluded them since their days in a war together over 10 years before. But to find that peace may require perhaps even more loss.

The series was created by writer and director Omri Givron, co-creator of the Israeli show “Hostages,” and based on a book by late Israeli author Amir Gutfreund.

Other cast members include: Nadav Netz is Yaeli’s brother, Dov ‘Dubi’ Ashkenazi, Michael Aloni is the very successful business Dotan ‘Himmler’ Friedman. Himmler blames Aviv for their commander’s death and the two have become bitter towards one another. And Moshe Ashkenazi is Yakir ‘Benda’ Ben-David, the one member of the team everyone loves regardless of how they feel about the others. Benda is a character every unit in every army in the world has. While he has had own problems, the sight of him always brings a smile to the face of his former teammates. And they all greet him the same way….”Fucking Benda!”

The Hebrew-language series with English subtitles is guaranteed to appeal to the fans of the action genre as well as those who prefer the thriller type cliffhangers. Having watched the first three episodes, we can’t wait for the rest of the series to make its debut starting tonight. And the series was picked up for a second season which is good news to see the story continue on.

Tune in tonight on Netflix, you’ll be glad you did.

Photos/video: Courtesy of Spiro Films

Breaking Your Own Rules Is #1 In Things Not to Do…Right?

Embarrassment and “Fun” Times in Morocco

So, first of all, Merry Christmas to all of our friends and readers out there. From all of us here, we wish you all the best and hope this finds you happy, healthy and surrounded by loved ones during the holiday season.

Just this past weekend, while chatting online with NEWSREP’s resident badass George Hand, a fellow former 7th SFG and Delta operator, we were comparing notes and pictures from our time in Morocco. And this was on our private writer’s page. Geo had been there with Delta, doing all of the cool-guy shit that Delta operators do. I, on the other hand, was there in a very different capacity. I was there as the Security Adviser for a Hollywood film, “The Green Zone” based on the real-life experiences of Monty Gonzales, a former Ranger Regiment guy who was in Iraq hunting for WMDs.

I had sent Geo a pic from there and he asked if he could post it on his public Facebook page, which he did. There, several of the guys I had worked with there, posted comments and sure enough, someone mentioned an incident that took place involving…yes, the Security Adviser. So, Geo and Alex from NEWSREP got their interest’s piqued and I figured, what the hell, it wasn’t the first time I’d been embarrassed and certainly won’t be the last…

The “Green Zone” was a fun film to work on. We had a fantastic cast and crew of at times 350 including extras. Starring Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Jason Isaacs, Brendan Gleeson, and Amy Ryan. Directed by Paul Greengrass, (Bourne films, United 93), it was a talented crew. Making it even more realistic was the fact that nearly all of the actors portraying the men in Damon’s Army unit weren’t professional actors but actual Iraq war vets who were hired to give a much more realistic feel to things.

Everyone got along extremely well and there was nary a hint of any issues (other than the weather) that can plague a large budget film. We were all based in a couple of hotels in the center of Rabat, Morocco, about two blocks from the Marketplace (Medina) and right on the ocean. Our hotel was right across the street from the Tomb of Mohammed and the Hassan Tower. There were always tons of cops there because of the site.

However, boys will be boys. And what happens in Rabat, stays in Rabat. The longer we were there, the more problems we’d have some of the male members of the crew going into the Red Light district late at night and often times alone. The area was full of small gangs of thieves who would prey upon the outnumbered. The results were many of them were getting robbed/rolled and they would then call me looking for assistance.

The common refrain from the Security Office was, “we’re not preaching morality here, just common sense. #1. Don’t go to the Red Light district, especially late at night and #2. never travel anywhere alone.” I said that so many times, I got sick of hearing it myself. Little did I know that I would be the next person to fall victim to Rule #2.

One night, I sat in the Hotel lobby bar with my good friend Barnaby, talking about hockey while he rubbed it in my nose that his beloved Giants had just beaten the Patriots in the Super Bowl. In actuality, the only two Patriots fans on the entire cast and crew were Mr. Damon and yours truly…

But after going up to my room, I couldn’t fall asleep, Rabat late-night television isn’t what I’d characterize as great. I figured a late night walk in the cool air around the hotel would be just fine, I’d walk around the Tomb of Mohammed since it is well lit and there are always a ton of cops there.

The Main entrance, the following day. There are two mounted white horses on one side, and two black horses on the other.

Inside the base camp, Monty Gonzales, Terry (Matt Damon’s personal security guy) Damon and the author early one morning in Rabat

Getting off the elevator, I should have known that it was a bad idea. The lobby was a ghost town, no security at the door, no clerk at the front desk…nobody. It felt like the scene in the “Devil’s Advocate” where the city is deserted.

All I had on was a pair of sweatpants, a Red Sox sweatshirt and my Special Forces ring which I never took off. No cash, no wallet, no I.D., just my room key. I walked across the street along with some shrubs that line the Tomb area. I entered the huge open area that was on the opposite side of the Tomb. It was right then that I heard them.

On the opposite side of the hedges, a small group of hoodlums was tearing up the street, I could see their heads as running along the sidewalk. As they approached the entrance they split in two and three entered the entrance and the rest kept going down to the next one, to cut off my escape route….Fuck, where the hell are the cops ?!?

I cut diagonally back to the lower edge where there were more shrubs and an exit near the roundabout in the road. No cops, nada. Shit….

They jumped out of the dark right by the exit, the oldest, a young punk about 17-18 held a kitchen knife that looked like it had been dipped in shit about three lifetimes ago. When they caught up to me, they realized I was at least a head taller than all of them and it gave them the slightest pause. But the young leader with the blade was undeterred. His knife gave him courage. He yelled something in French, which I don’t speak a word of… (Geo I needed your language skills!). I shrugged as if to say I don’t understand.

They all started to jibber-jabber in a mixture of Arabic and French and the tough guy leader gestured for money. I didn’t have any, just a room key and my ring and those little shits weren’t getting that. I put my hands out to say, “Okay I will give it to you” and moved my hand to my pocket. The leader lowered his knife slightly and at that time, I grabbed his skinny little wrist and twisted it as hard as I could, trying to snap the fucker in half. The knife clattered to the ground. And with the adrenaline going, I punched him as hard as I could right in the forehead. He went ass over teakettle into the shrubs.

Now I was pissed, I grabbed the knife and the rest of those little shits decided that robbing that French/English tourist wasn’t a great idea and took off. With the knife in my hand, I gave chase down the middle of the street. Guess who showed up?

The cops see a white guy chasing a bunch of local punks with a knife in his hand and now I’m safely surrounded by Rabat cops, pointing their guns at me. With four of them shouting at me, the only thing I recognized is that they wanted me to get down in the street. I gave them the universal language that they understood immediately. I told them to go fuck themselves.

Right before they commenced to either shooting me or beating the hell out of me with clubs, an officer showed up who spoke some English. I made him quickly aware that it was me who was being robbed. He understood and took a statement from me that took entirely too long because his English was limited and my knowledge of French and Arabic was virtually non-existent.

So much for sleep that night. The next morning on the set, I ran into Monty and his brother Jason and told them how I had broken my own rules and nearly got robbed right outside of the hotel. After embarrassingly swearing them to secrecy I wandered off to walk around the set perimeter to stay awake more than anything else.

Well by that afternoon, either the hotel people blabbing to others in the crew or my buddy Monty spilling the beans, everyone knew that the “Security guy that tells everyone not to go out alone almost got robbed for doing the same stuff”. Besides feeling like a hypocrite, I ignored it. Our director Paul saw me in the afternoon and he asked what happened. I cringed and relayed the story exactly how it went down. He laughed.

“I heard that this morning,” he said. “But it has been making the rounds among the crew and it has gotten better with each telling. Now there were a dozen al-Qaeda guys with AKs and RPGs storming the hotel” Paul laughed and said, “I can’t wait until what it will be tonight.”

The story had an even more sublime ending. About a week later, I came down about 6 a.m. as we were heading out to the old U.S. airbase at Kenitra to film there. It was about 45 minutes from the hotel. It was the same airbase that “Black Hawk Down” was filmed at. My Moroccan driver, Hassan who spoke English, Spanish, French, and Arabic was waiting for me as usual.

Just then a slew of Moroccan cops entered the hotel lobby, they went to the desk and after speaking with the clerk, I saw the clerk gesture toward me. I was surrounded by four cops all speaking at the same time and one guy with a camera.

“What are they saying,?” I asked my driver. “Steve, they want to take a picture of your hand…” he said. Unsure of what they wanted I looked at the one with the camera and he just kept gesturing to put my hands on the table. When I did he snapped about four pictures. It was then another cop entered and he was talking at length with my driver, who smiled at me. Next, the cop produced some photos of the little punk with the knife….they had caught him.

My driver was laughing, “he said it wasn’t him, that he wasn’t there,” Hassan said. “But look at the last picture.” Sure enough, right above his left eye on his forehead was a perfect cut, an indent from the top of my SF ring. The crossed arrowheads and the loop of the crest were unmistakable. The cops had made note of my ring initially and then needed a picture to corroborate their report. “He’s going to get 11 years…automatic,” the cop said to my driver who translated. “He’ll be gone later today.” The wheels of the justice system turn very fast there.

The author’s old Heritage Jewelers SF ring, over 30-something years old and looking better than the owner does.

So, yes, I was the hypocrite who broke his own rules, luckily for me, I didn’t have a steep price to pay other than being embarrassed by breaking my own rules. As Paul Harvey used to say, “now you know the rest of the story…” Merry Christmas.

Photos: Author

New Miniseries “When Heroes Fly” Looks to Be a Smash

The Israelis are producing some excellent quality miniseries for television. “Fauda’ which centers around an Israeli Special Operations unit that goes undercover inside Gaza looks a lot like what we’ve read recently where a real operation went bad and the team got into a shootout with Palestinian members of Hamas. “Mossad 101” was another good one, where candidates for the Israeli spy agency are put thru the ringer by their demanding instructor who is running live ops while training his class of candidates. And they don’t know which is real or training.

The latest is a new series which will debut on January 10th on Netflix called “When Heroes Fly.” It centers around another Israeli Special Operations unit that was fighting in Lebanon in 2006. They get into a fierce firefight with Hezbollah fighters that greatly outnumber them while trying to rescue some crewmen from a disabled Israeli tank. During the fighting, their commander is killed. The team has a falling out over it and bitter recriminations go back and forth over their decisions on that fateful night which takes place when the team is trying to exfil back to Israeli territory and go home the next day.

The men go their separate ways for 11 years until the sister of one of the teammates, who happened to be the lover of the officer who took charge when the commander went down is seen in Colombia. Except that she supposedly died in a car crash there nine years before. And they find out that she’s being held against her will. So the commandos reunite for a final, personal rescue mission.

Their final mission together takes them deep into the heart of the Colombian jungle, where they soon realize that if they are to succeed in their search to find Yaeli, each of them must first confront the trauma of their battle in Lebanon that tore them apart so many years before.

It is about men from a Special Operations unit who all get a second chance to find the peace that has eluded them since their days together. But to do so will require perhaps even more loss.

SpecialOperations.com was contacted by the film company and we were lucky enough to get a sneak preview of the first three episodes. We hope to eventually sit down with some of the cast members before the January 10th premiere for a follow-up piece.

But the story is guaranteed to grab you and pull you in and keep you hooked until the final episode. It has been enormously popular in Israel and the cast and crew have already been signed on for a second season of 10 episodes.

The series was created by writer and director Omri Givron, co-creator of the Israeli show “Hostages,” and based on a book by late Israeli author Amir Gutfreund.

When Heroes Fly is produced by Spiro Films for Keshet Broadcasting. Having won the Best Series award at the inaugural Canneseries festival in April, the series debuted on Keshet 12 in May to rave reviews, increasing slot average by 35% in ratings and 21% in share, and making it the channel’s most-watched drama on Israeli television.

The headliner is Tomer Kappon who played a role in Netflix’s “Fauda”. He plays Aviv Danino, the second-in-command of the Special Ops unit and who suffers from horrible PTSD, after 11-years later from their experiences in Lebanon.

Israeli pop singer and actress Ninette Tayeb plays Yael ‘Yaeli’ Ashkenazi, the love interest of Aviv who everyone believed killed in Colombia in a car accident nearly a decade ago. She’s considered one of the most famous new faces in the Israeli entertainment industry.

Nadav Netz is her brother, Dov ‘Dubi’ Ashkenazi, Michael Aloni is the very successful business Dotan ‘Himmler’ Friedman. Himmler blames Aviv for their commander’s death and the two have become bitter towards one another. And Moshe Ashkenazi is Yakir ‘Benda’ Ben-David, the one member of the team everyone loves regardless of where they stand elsewhere.

The Hebrew-language film with English subtitles is guaranteed to appeal to the fans of the action genre as well as those who prefer the thriller type cliffhangers. Having watched the first three episodes, we can’t wait for the rest of the series to make its debut in January. The trailer for the series can be seen below:

“The Catcher Was a Spy” Moe Berg, OSS, A Swing, and a Miss

Like most Special Forces guys, especially of my generation, I can’t get enough of OSS (Office of Strategic Services) from World War II. OSS was the “Greatest Generation” version of both CIA and the U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Berets) as both sprang forth from the extraordinary organization that General William “Wild Bill” Donovan built from scratch. With the help of the British, and learning on the fly, the United States had, for the first time, a professional intelligence organization and a military force that was expert in the art of Unconventional Warfare.

Donovan attracted all types of people, making OSS quite the eclectic organization. He was looking for “PhDs who can win a bar fight.” Moe Berg fit the bill to a tee. A professional athlete, Berg, although far from a star, played major league baseball for 15 seasons as a catcher, no mean feat, as well as being one of the few Jewish players in MLB. He was also a brilliant scholar and could speak 10 languages, seven fluently and graduated from both Princeton and the Sorbonne and studied law at Columbia at a time when Jews didn’t attend in large numbers.

The story of Berg who spied for America before Pearl Harbor on a “goodwill” tour of Japan with other major league ballplayers in the 1930s and joined OSS during the war is well known among the avid readers within the intelligence and SOF communities. But to many, he was an unknown. This film that came out this summer, changed that to a degree.

Director Ben Lewin, based his film off of the bio of Berg, Nicholas Dawidoff’s 1994, The Catcher Was a Spy. He assembled a great cast featuring two of my favorite actors, Paul Rudd, who is fantastic as always as Berg, Mark Strong, and a very good supporting cast with Sienna Miller, Guy Pearce, Connie Nielsen, Paul Giamatti, Tom Wilkinson, who I had the pleasure of working with on a Mossad film (The Debt) and Giancarlo Giannini.

I wanted to like this film, no…I wanted to love this film, as anyone who loves seeing anything about OSS in print or film does. But it doesn’t ever reach that level. In baseball parlance, unfortunately, the film is a “can of corn.”

The film goes out of its way to portray Berg as the enigma that he was. He was an introvert, a scholar and a Jew in the world of professional baseball where those traits were in short supply. But the film takes his solitary life a step farther. Lewin depicts Berg as a closet homosexual, although there has never been any evidence that Berg was.

However, the stretch isn’t too far between being a catcher in the MLB and a spy. After all, catchers are always trying to hide their signals to the pitcher from prying eyes by putting them down between their legs. And if anyone watches games closely, they’ll put down multiple signs to throw off anyone stealing them, in a simplistic but effective code.

Berg, excellently played by Rudd, is finishing up his career with the Red Sox and is ready to go into coaching when the winds of war start to blow before WWII. Touring Japan with other big leaguers, Berg snuck on top of a hospital and filmed the harbor and naval shipyards after reading about the Japanese Empire expanding. His prewar footage of Japan’s military facilities, put him on the radar of Donovan, played by Jeff Daniels. Berg is brought into OSS in early 1943.

After doing deskwork, Berg was assigned to the Special Operations Branch (SO). He was a paramilitary operations officer in OSS that would today be part of the CIA Special Activities Division.

Later he was placed in the OSS Secret Intelligence branch (SI) on the Balkans desk. Berg parachuted into occupied Yugoslavia to evaluate the various resistance groups operating against the Nazis. He met both Draža Mihailović and Josef Tito.

In the film, they touch on his next assignment. While the US is rushing forth with the Manhattan Project, the government is worried about the Nazis getting the bomb first. Werner Heisenberg (Strong), is one of the leading scientists in Germany’s quest for the bomb. While the threat is significant enough, there is some doubt about how close the Germans are. So, if they are close, Berg’s mission is to assassinate him.

He travels with another scientist (Giamatti) and a military escort (Pearce) to Zurich where Heisenberg is and he has to make a determination whether or not to kill him

Miller is cast as Berg’s long-time girlfriend, whom he keeps, like everyone else at arm’s distance. When asked point blank by Daniels if he is “queer”, Rudd/Berg answers, “I’m good at keeping secrets.”

When Berg finally meets Heisenberg, the two dance around in a nicely crafted scene where neither is willing to give much. Berg is looking for anything to confirm that the Nazis are ready to construct the atomic bomb and he’ll be tasked with killing him. While a great scene and expertly played, the film lacks the suspense we’d normally see in a spy film.

The aloofness and repressed part of his supposed homosexuality is the basis for Lewin’s assertion of proof of Berg’s bona fides as a spy. The scene where he sings the Battle Hymn of the Republic was a good one, Berg, despite his closeted personal life, is a patriot and that explains part of his motivation.

But overall, the film was too thin and it could have been much, much better. Especially with the outstanding cast that they surrounded the director with.

Berg was an intriguing character. He was intensely personal and tried to go to work for CIA after the war, but then only getting one contractor type of assignment. He never married and lived with his brother for several years before he was asked to leave, He then moved in with his sister, where he stayed until passing away at the age of 70 in 1972.

He was described as moody and snappish by his family. After WWII, he felt he lost the ability to follow his calling for his second career in the CIA. He was quoted however that, “I’d rather be a ballplayer than a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court” when someone accused him of wasting his talents on baseball.

He was awarded the Medal of Freedom for his service in OSS, but he turned it down. His sister eventually accepted it on his behalf.

He was cremated after his death and had his ashes scattered over a mountain in Israel. His baseball card is on display at CIA Headquarters.

Photos: Wikipedia/IFC Films