Losing It: when good guys go bad

The following contains plot spoilers.

“The horror! The horror!” whimpers Colonel Walter E. Kurtz as he exhales his last, insane breath in the infamous Apocalypse Now. Colonel Kurtz (a very fat Marlon Brando) is the quintessential good guy gone bad – a model soldier who goes seriously bonkers in the Vietnam jungle. The latest movie to show the madness – and horror – of war is Lebanon, the first Israeli film to win the Venice Film festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion. The film is based on the director’s own experience of war. Dreaming of babes on the beach in his home town of Tel Aviv, he was recruited to perform national service at very much the wrong time; the 1982 Lebanon War. It totally scarred him. In his first feature film he shows four similarly inexperienced soldiers entering battle and wielding a tank that is effectively a home that doubles as a lethal weapon. The gunner’s too scared to shoot, the driver doesn’t know how to command the engine and the captain…well, the captain loses it. Big time. He finds out he’s in illegal territory and instead of sorting it out, just starts shaving his filthy stubble, smearing tank grease all over his face and staring vacantly ahead. The men’s mental turmoil is exacerbated by their inability to escape the tank; a claustrophobic, sweat-and-piss-soaked tin can that deteriorates along with their minds. Not for nothing did Brokeback Mountain director Ang Lee select Lebanon as his top pick of last year’s London Film festival! Lebanon hits cinemas everywhere from this Friday 14 May and it’s not to be missed.

Moving away from the war setting, there’s plenty of films where good guys lose it. How about Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining? “Here’s Johnny!” rumbles a crazed Jack Nicholson after one too many nights’ stay at the Overview Hotel. The stay at the wintry white Colorado hotel turns a perfectly nice dad and author into a homicidal manic ready and willing to murder his wife and son.

On a similar tip, a mind-bending book adapted for the screen by a heavyweight director, is the more recent Shutter Island. Leonardo DiCaprio plays US Marshall Teddy Daniels who intends on investigating the disappearance of a delusional patient from the island’s mental institution but starts getting a little delusional himself. Tough guy Teddy loses it when he starts flashbacking to Dachau, doubting the eerie prison boss Dr. Cawley and fighting inmates in a dimly lit high-security ward.

Other key characters famous for losin’ it include Michael Douglas in Falling Down (haven’t you ever wanted fast-food breakfast after 11am?), Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (“Stellaaaaa!”), the late Justin Pierce in Kids (he delivers the film’s poignant last lines “Jesus Christ, what happened?”) and pretty much everyone in Danny Boyle’s The Beach!

Can you think of others? If so, comment below, but whatever you do, don’t miss Lebanon in cinemas this Friday, 14 May!

Watch the trailer for Lebanon here.

Last edited: 15th May 2010

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