Movie buff Dale Kutzera does a technically admirable job with a half-baked comic concept in his directing debut, “Military Intelligence and You!”
The idea was to re-create a black- and-white, World War II Army training film — clunky dialogue, declamatory acting, suspenseless suspense and all — with a contemporary perspective.
Therefore, as the film’s aerial intelligence unit tries to find the hidden location of a Luftwaffe “ghost” squadron, characters and the self-important narrator speak in barely altered buzz phrases from the war on terror.
America’s been traumatized since 1 2/7, the Axis are evildoers, the U.S. penchant for attacking enemies whenever we feel like it, regardless of whether they pose a threat to us or not; that kind of stuff.
This gets old in about 10 minutes, but the movie strikes the same comic note for another hour.
One thing it does do well, though, is blend new footage — mostly of a command center in Italy, with arch performances from Patrick Muldoon, Elizabeth Bennett and Mackenzie Astin — and little-known scenes from actual wartime training films.
William Holden, Elisha Cook Jr., Arthur Kennedy and others get seamlessly interspersed with the new material, and there’s a real historical thrill seeing unfamiliar (if hardly their most distinguished) work from these guys.
But that wears off after a few minutes, too.
“military intelligence and you!”
Not rated, violence, language. 1 hour, 18 minutes. Directed by Dale Kutzera. Starring Patrick Muldoon, Elizabeth Bennett, Mackenzie Astin. Opens today at the Starz FilmCenter.
