Movie nerd that I’ve always been, I have very fond memories of Movie Night with the family when I was a wee lad growing up in 1980’s British Columbia, when we’d go to the local Video Store, that always seemed to smell of popcorn and slight mustiness, rent a VCR (that weighed roughly the same as our Volkswagen Van) and two flicks on VHS (we weren’t trendy or rich enough for Betamax, despite it being the better quality format), usually one for my sister and I, and one for the folks. This bi-weekly tradition bled over to my birthdays, where I was allowed to rent two movies of my choosing, rating be damned, and we’d watch them with the select buddies who’d been invited over, usually accompanied by 2 for 1 pizza (I miss those) and my mom’s amazing apple crisp (never been a cake fan).
For my birthday in the way back of 1989, one of the movies that I’d noticed the theatrical trailer for was Nick Nolte’s WW2 flick, Farewell to the King, so, being that I was (and admittedly still am) a big fan of WW2 history, this one landed on my request list for that year’s birthday festivities (the other MAY have been 1988’s terrifically entertaining Midnight Run…though still a bit murky on that).
And…I haven’t seen it since then.
Key scenes stuck with me, but in the 35 years since I saw it that one time, I’ve lost track of what my overall impression actually was. Granted, at the time, it would’ve been viewed through the naively ignorant eyes of twelve-year-old Me, but I honestly couldn’t remember if I had liked it or not.
So fast forward to ‘today’ and I find myself actively seeking out old-school bits of media from my childhood (I blame what Is turning out to be a surprisingly productive mid-life crisis). One of those things are HD versions of movies from back in the day. Being that Farewell to the King featured prominently into one of my birthdays, during a very influential time in my life, it made for a natural target in my little quest.
The thing is, this doesn’t seem to be a very popular flick and there are limited avenues in which to find it. Being a lover of the Blu ray format, and a fan of media from other regions, I found that there seemed to be only one ‘real’ Blu ray release, and that was a questionably authentic German edition (similar to my Blu ray copies of The Hitcher and Strange Days), default coded for a German-language version. However, with my region-free player and the uncanny ability to switch languages in Settings (amazing, I know) everything works out beautifully and I’ve scored several surprisingly well-done-though-not-locally-available versions of movies that North America just can’t seem to be bothered with.
Farewell to the King is apparently one of those.
Based on the 1969 novel by author Pierre Schoendoerffer and directed by openly Right-wing, ‘macho’ director John Milius (Red Dawn), Farewell to the King opens in 1942 with a group of American Navy deserters washing up on the embattled island nation of Borneo. Among them is a man named ‘Learoyd’ (Nick Nolte), who barely manages to escape the clutches of the Japanese army, condemned to watch his comrade’s executions from afar, before fleeing into the unforgiving jungle. Three years later, a British military operative named ‘Captain Fairbourne’ (Nigel Havers, who was amazing in Spielberg’s criminally underrated Empire of the Sun two years earlier) and his radio-man ‘Sgt. Tenga’ (Frank McRae) are air-dropped into the area to rally the local tribes to the Allied cause against the struggling Japanese forces. Captured by tribesmen, the two are startled to see them being peacefully led by a stoic white man. This is where ‘Learoyd’ ended up, after vanishing into the wilderness, frantic and half-dead. Eventually the deserter-turned-tribal royalty comes to trust ‘Fairbourne’ and the two (with the addition of reinforcements) embark on training the locals, before turning them loose on the occupying Japanese forces. What emerges is a violent and tragic back-and-forth of strategies between the two groups, leading to death and destruction on both sides, from both sides.
John Milius is an interesting character, especially during his tenure in the late ‘70’s, leading through that Golden Era that was the 1980’s. As a staunchly and notoriously conservative writer / director in a predominantly liberal-leaning Hollywood, he definitely brought a notable romantically macho ‘flavour’ to his various projects, be it his poignant screenwriting on the ever-classic Apocalypse Now (1979) or by bringing Robert E. Howard’s manly pulp-fantasy hero ‘Conan’ to life via his visionary guidance as director on Conan The Barbarian (1982).
He’s also responsible for directing what is probably my favorite ‘What if?’ scenario movie, with that being 1984’s amazing and historically misunderstood Red Dawn. Despite the fact that my political leanings (largely to the Left, when I can be bothered to care) definitely clash with that man’s world-view, I do appreciate his contributions to the cinematic landscape during that period.
It was his 1991 attempt at a Vietnam war movie of his own (Francis Ford Coppola was the genius who adapted his Apocalypse Now screenplay) when he made the surprisingly embarrassing Flight of the Intruder, that my warm regard for his divisive output slipped, which is just as well, as it seems he never directed another theatrical release again, being relegated to the odd TV episode or movie.
I’m a sucker for a good Vietnam war film (1987’s Hamburger Hill’s probably still my favorite), especially if military aircraft are featured, but the acting, dialogue and, especially, the effects are cringe-inducing and unintentionally hilarious, despite a healthy $35 million budget (in ’91) and the presence of such notables like Danny Glover (Bat 21), Williem Dafoe (Platoon) and Tom Sizemore (Strange Days), the flick just didn’t come together and remains a black spot on the resumes of those involved.
Knowing where Farewell to the King fell into Milius’ filmography and still feeling distaste for Intruder in my bones, I was super curious to revisit this one to see if it was good enough to rub shoulders with his earlier genuinely impressive output or was the writing on the wall for the heap of garbage that his next/last film was destined to become?
Well, having now revisited this flick after 35 years…I can honestly say that the writing was on the wall. Mostly.
During this re-watch, I didn’t set out to jot down pages of notes as I normally do, as the 1 hour and 57 minute flick played out, but I did scribble down a few ‘reminders’ that I’ll touch on here:
–Cheesy music. In the right context, the music of Basil Poledouris is a rousing, boisterous affair, as seen in Milius’ previous work, as well as Paul Verhoeven’s amazing duo Robocop and Starship Troopers (where his over-the-top score bolstered the over-the-top satire and gore of both titles). Here, however, it’s just in-you-face in it’s attempts to evoke a classic yet epic score, while way overshooting it’s bounds, in my humble opinion. I strongly feel that this flick would’ve benefited greatly from a more subdued, ominous approach, musically speaking.
–Hilarious flash-back transition. Remember Wayne’s World? Where ‘Wayne’ and ‘Garth’ mock the silly wavy scene-transition style of old? Well, this may as well have been the example they were mocking because it looks hilarious. Hell, it would’ve looked hilarious and out-of-place back in ’89!
–Hammy dialogue. Milius has a very pulpy way of portraying dialogue, which suited Conan just fine, but didn’t fair so well in a medium-budget WW2 drama seven years later. This is especially apparent in scenes where manly men talk to each other, often waxing deep or poetic, with a cheesy undercurrent of uber-masculine stoicism, that shows itself through the unnatural manner with which characters interact. The late 80’s / early 90’s saw the emergence of the more vulnerable, every-man type hero (thank you, John McClane!) and this style of masculine hero (not to mention the whole unsavoury ‘white saviour’ element!) didn’t seem to resonate with the ‘contemporary’ audiences of the time, who were now seeking more sophisticated characters leading more relatable story-lines, as reflected in Farewell’s sad box office showing.
–Lame sound effects. This particular problem plagues ALL of Milius’ films and it drives me nuts. The work we see onscreen deserves better than we end up hearing. He puts all this work into the on-set, in-camera trappings of his ‘worlds’, but when it comes to Post-Production, suddenly he seems to cheap out and shits the bed, using what sounds like horribly outdated and flat sound effects from some generic library somewhere, especially where gunfire and explosions are concerned. If, while he’s still alive (though currently in his early 80’s), he was to go back and replace and remaster, especially for Red Dawn, I would be A OK with it.
–Nolte committed! Nick Nolte (48 Hours) is a big, intense dude (just check out his mugshot!) and when he commits to a character, he commits. This was no different, with his ‘Learoyd’ frequently scowling, grimacing or glaring, when he isn’t yelling, screaming or shouting. There are even moments where he smiles and laughs! But he definitely seems to be embracing the operatic coloring Milius’ seemed to be going for.
–On the nose. No subtlety. Those two sentences pretty sum up Milius’s filmography and Farewell to the King was certainly no different. To its detriment.
–Choppy edits. Holy shit! This was actually a little astounding, especially revisiting this one with 35 more years of film knowledge under my belt. This felt like a rough cut, given how frequently scenes were stitched together with little to no finesse. There are two different cuts of this out there but I’m not sure how different they are or how much smoother the other version may be in comparison. Regardless, the German-market version I’ve got, looking past what appeared to be no attempt to clean up whatever print was used for this ‘HD’ transfer, felt amateurish and below the quality that I think Milius was ultimately going for.
–Old fashioned acting style. Which just ‘cheese’s the whole place up and lessens the overall intended impact of the film, lending something overly theatrical to the proceedings that cheapen the narrative.
–Awkward ADR. This one also falls into the Lousy Editing category, as the volume levels were all over the place, with the Automated Dialogue Replacement (ie dialogue recorded in a booth way after the fact) standing out sharply in several instances (at times not even sounding like the actor speaking onscreen), obviously different from the rest. Or the lips or facial movements don’t match what you hear. Yea, there’s a fair bit of that going on here too.
–Oddly inconsistent shot quality. This is just the visual version of the previous point / complaint, with the shot quality varying frequently, which is surprising considering that world-renowned Australian cinematographer Dean Semler (Razorback) allegedly lensed the movie and is known for his often beautiful, MTV-inspired painting-with-light style compositions. While there was some of that here, there was just as often ugly soft-focus or drab lighting that failed to make the jungles of Borneo pop out like the character that it deserved to be seen as.
And that was that…my just cuz revisit of an obscure box office bomb from 35 years gone by, that I saw once at one of my childhood birthday parties way back in the warm mists of time.
How do I feel? Largely indifferent, to be honest.
As a whole, with certain considerations in mind and looking past the sweet lens of nostalgia, Farewell to the King is…fine, I guess, leaning toward Not Great. Looking past the whole icky-by-today’s-standard’s perception of the ‘white saviour’ angle (though he really isn’t, if you follow through with the narrative), it’s an overly theatrical yet strangely amateurish redemption arc for a predominantly one-dimensional character, played by an actor who excels at chewing the shit outta the scenery in service of an overly linear-yet-clumsy script, as crafted by a notoriously right-wing conservative with a classic (and outdated) ‘masculine’ hero fetish.
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