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Earl Aagaard’s opinions about everything that interests him. Og also enjoys gardening, travel, reading, woodbutchery, and lots of other stuff.

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Saturday, February 21, 2009

A FILM EVERY AMERICAN OUGHT TO SEE….

  * FEBRUARY 19, 2009, 8:46 P.M. ET

GUARD OF HONOR

By Dorothy Rabinowitz

It was impossible to imagine, beforehand, all the ways a film like “Taking Chance” (Saturday, 8-9:30 p.m. EST, on HBO) could work its power. There are no conflicts, no warring sides, no mysteries of character—the usual stuff of drama. The story’s outcome is clear from the beginning. Yet it’s no less clear that “Taking Chance” is not only high drama, but a kind that is, in the most literal way, breathtaking—watching parts of it can make breathing an effort, and those parts come at every turn. It’s no less obvious that this film, about a Marine killed in combat, could have gone wrong in all sorts of ways and did so in none of them. There is in this work, at once so crushing and exhilarating, not a false note.

The credit for that belongs to Lt. Col. Michael Stroble, U.S. Marine Corps, on whose journal the film is based; to producer, writer and director Ross Katz; and, not least, to Kevin Bacon, whose portrayal of the devoted Col. Stroble is a masterwork—flawless in its fierce economy, eloquent in its testimony, most of it wordless, to everything that is going on.

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Posted by Earl on 02/21 at 07:34 PM
REVIEWS • Movie • Comments •
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