Page 6-Saturday, August 15, 1981-The Michigan Daily
TheVictory' of hooey

By CHRISTOPHER POTTER
Daily Arts Writer
The very title of the film Victory
brazenly begs the issue: Relax,
folks-we guarantee you the good guys
are gonna win this time out.
John Huston's new movie transports
us back to those thrilling days of 1943,
focusing on a German POW camp deep
in the heart of the Third Reich. It's a
placid year for wartime Europe, with
the bulk of the world conflict raging
east and south of the continent. Within
the boundaries of the camp, Allied
prisoners and their German captors
alike sit restlessly, waiting out the
duration of the war.
NOTTING THAT the POWs spend
most of their daytime hours engaged in
a perpetual game of soccer, new camp
commandant Von Steiner (Max von
Sydow) suggests to Allied game super-
visor Colby (Michael Caine) that a
friendly - game between inmates and
German Army soldiers might help
stimulate morale on both sides. After a
bit of commiseration as to how war is
hell and how the universal bond of sp-

ort transcends all political schisms, the
two men-both ex-soccer stars them-
selves and therefore decent, human
chaps-agree to compete.
Alas, Von Steiner's superiors are less
than idealists. Sensing a propaganda
coup, the Nazis announce their intent to
turn the match into a multi-ethnic cir-
cus, pitting the best of all European
POW players against the crack Ger-
man National team before a crowd of
thousands in Paris. The resultant
trouncing of the emaciated Allies will,
they villainously chuckle, lend public
creedence to the Reich's dogma of
Aryan superiority.
Zounds! Surely the POWs would not
play willing supes in such a racist
sideshow! Hell, sure they would-un-
beknown to their captors, the French
Underground plans to smuggle the
players out of the stadium at half time.
What better way to pimp the Heinies at
their own nasty game?
And yet ... and yet. .. what if the
team was to stay and actually win the
soccer match, even at the price of
escape-thus vindicating truth, justice

Sylvester Stallone portrays the quin-
tessential WWII-movie caricature of
the impudently righteous American in
'Victory.'
and Free World athletics? Boy, that'd
knock those Krauts on their ideological
asses!
MORE INTERESTING than
anything in Victory is Detroit News
critic Susan Stark's recent review of it.
Hailing the "intelligence, courage, and
high purposefulness" of Huston's "per-
fectly thrilling entertainment," Stark
rejoices that the movie "manages to

Q1lurt r rLu t tE0

ST. MARY'S CHAPEL
(Roman Catholic)
331 Thompson-663-0557
Summer Masses:
Sunday-8:30 am, 10:30 am, 12 noon,
and 5 pm.
Mon., Tues., Wed.-5:10pm.
Thurs., Fri.,-12:10pm.
LORD OF LIGHT LUTHERAN
CHURCH.
(The Campus Ministry of the
ALC-LCA )
Gordon Ward, Pastor
801 S. Forest at Hill St.
Sunday Worship Service at 10:30.
Aug. 25-choir at 7 p.m.

CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY
Huron Valley Mission
301 North Ingalls
(two blocks north of Rackham
Graduate School)
668-6113
Sunday Service-2:30 p.m.
Rev. Marian K. Kuhns
FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH
OF ANN ARBOR
1917 Washtenaw (corner of Berkshire)
Sunday Services at 10:30 a.m.
Coffee Hour and conversation after
services.
Kenneth W. Hilfer-Minister-665-6158

'WHY DO THE HEATHEN RAGE?'
Psalm 2:1 and Acts 4:25
Matthew 9:36.38 reads: "WHEN HE (JESUS) SAW THE MULTITUDES, HE
WAS MOVED WITH COMPASSION ON THEM, BECAUSE THEY FAINTED,
AND WERE SCATTERED ABROAD AS SHEEP HAVING NO SHEPHERD.
THEN SAID HE UNTO HIS DISCIPLES, THE HARVEST TRULY IS
PLENTEOUS BUT THE LABORERS ARE FEW: PRAY YE THEREFORE THE
LORD OF THE HARVEST THAT HE WILL SEND FORTH LABORERS INTO
HIS HARVEST."
"THE HARVEST IS PLENTEOUS BUT THE LABORERS ARE FEWI" When
Jesus said that "the woods were full" of Levites, Priests, Scribes, Doctors,
Teachers, Divines, etc. But most of these divines had become DRY VINES,
and many of the doctors were DOCTORS OF DARKNESS. Read what He told
them about their condition In the 23rd of Matthew - they were so outraged
that they managed to get Him crucifiedt The 23rd chapter of Jeremiah isj
somewhat like the 23rd of Matthew, where about 800 years before God had
warned the spiritual leaders of their corrupt condition. Also, about 700 years
before He had warned them by His servant Isaiah, chapter 56:10, 11: "HIS
WATCHMEN ARE BLIND: THEY ARE ALL IGNORANT, THEY ARE ALL DUMB
DOGS, THEY CANNOT BARK; SLEEPING, LYING DOWN, LOVING TO
SLUMBER. YEA, THEY ARE GREEDY DOGS WHICH CAN NEVER HAVE
ENOUGH, AND THEY ARE SHEPHERDS THAT CANNOT UNDERSTAND; --."
God asks us this question: "Who makes thee to differ from another, and
what hast thou that thou did not receive?" If we are true Christians hating
evil, apostacy, and hypocrisy, we should remember that it Is the mercy of God
that has deliverd us and made us to differ from the ungodly, and that this
blessing has been received from God "BY HIS GRACE THROUGH FAITH."
This should not make us proud, rather humble, and stir us up to work, testify,
and pray that the Dry Vines might receive Life and bear much fruit; that the
Doctors of Darkness might become Doctors of "The Light of The World."
P.O. BOX 405DCTR ERIpCQ1
t -y 'r .rs .;'. w't , ,av.-r ._ _ _) : :. . : °

FIRST UNITED METHODIST
CHURCH
120 S. State St.
(Corner of State and Huron)
Worship Schedule:
Sermon for Aug. 16-"If Sheep Could
Talk," by Dr. Gerald R. Parker.
9:30 am-Morning Worship in the
Sanctuary.
Church School for all ages at 9:30 am.
Ministers:
Dr. Donald B. Strobe
Rev. Fred B. Maitland
Dr. Gerald R. Parker
Education Directors: Rose McLean
and Carol Bennington
10:30 Lemonade-on-the-lawn.
UNIVERSITY LUTHERAN CHAPEL
Serving the Campus for LC-MS
Robert Kavasch, Pastor
1511 Washtenaw Ave.
663-5560
Sunday Worship: 9:00 am (Summer
Hours). *
CAMPUS CHAPEL
1226 Washtenaw Ct.
A Campus Ministry of the Christian
Reformed Church
Rev. Don Postema, Pastor
10 ,a.m.-Service of Holy Baptism.
Rev. Don Postema.
6 p.m.-Evening Prayers.
Rev. Ken Verhulst
Never
Silen t
764-0558

avoid all the cliches of mediocre war
and sports movies alike."
Really. How innvoative of Huston and
his screenwriters to conjure up and
pound home the notion that the
brotherhood of sports can bind a riven
world. How original to have Sylvester
Stallone chew up the scenery as the
camp's lone Yank, Bob Hatch, a rebel
whose brash, irrepressible All-
American spunkiness elicits eventual
admiration even from the taciturn Cap-
tain Colby (Caine), who mutters
"bloody Yank" with fatherly affection.
Hatch, once he's bluffed *nd bullied his
way onto the team, miraculously turns
out to be a brilliant goaltender in a
sport he's never played before.
One gasps at Huston's innovative
genius as the Allies, hopelessly behind
at halftime, rally inspirationally while
the Nazi-hating Parisian crowd bursts
into a roaring rendition of the Mar-
seillaise. One frets as real-life ex-
soccer king Pele, his ribs broken early
on by a skulduggerous German player,
begs to be put back in ("I can do it,
coach, I can do it!"). Operating on
sheer guts alone, he hobbles back on the
field and-would you believe it-blasts
the go-ahead goal past the astonished
opposition!
SECONIDS LATER, goalie Stallone
goes eyeball-to-eyeball with Germany's
top player ("I'm better'n you, Nazi!")
in an effort to block a climactic, last-
second penalty shot. Omigod, will he
make the save, WILL HE MAKE
IT? ... Omigod, he made it!! He made
it!! Yeah democracy!!
The screaming French storm the
field en mass to embrace their battered
liberators, leaping and twirling to the
inundations of Bill Conti's throbbing
musical score lifted straight-note-for-
note-out of Shostakovich's Fifth.
This exercise in big-budget jingoistic
hooey benefits undeniably from the
guiding-if unoriginal-hand of John
Huston, the oldest of the old directorial
pros and an acknowledged master at
turning baloney into pseudo-steak. If
one discards the fact that 30 years ago
Huston was regarded as the most
shining, creative light in Hollywood, it's
easy to relax and enjoy the emanations
of an artist who instinctively knows how
to put on a good show-even if from a
permanent niche of underachievement.
For all its froth, Victory flows smartly
and smoothly-save for an inter-
minable prison-escape sequence which
seems concocted strictly as a star turn
for lead player Stallone.
INDEED, ONE constantly detects
the macho sweat of our most
vainglorious screen actor seeping
through Victory's' foundations-though
Stallone reputedly had no direct con-
nection with plot or production. This
self-acknowledged egotist's im-
moderate notions of heroism and civics
displayed themselves earlier this year
in Nighthawks-an urban terrorism
thriller which was one of the ugliest
exercises in brute illiberality in recent
memory.
Victory spares itself similar
revulsion simply by being too
boneheaded to be taken seriously. Yet
when a movie's very stupidity is also its
saving grace, you know something is
lacking-even if the good guys do win.
Rocky HII, anybody,

I

4

I

4

1