When the old-fashioned melodrama «The War Lover» premiered in 1962 it did not impress anyone. The protagonist Buzz Rickson (a convincing unpleasant performance by Steve McQueen), a psychopathic American pilot, haughty and pedantic, hardly aroused sympathy among mass audiences, other than military and civilian population who might have shared with him his obsession with war, macho supremacy or boastful bragging. This aspect of Rickson only finds objection and disgust in Daphne Caldwell (Shirley Anne Field), a pacifist British girl who defends opposite values , which she expresses in her dialogues with Ed Bolland (Robert Wagner), Rickson's co-pilot. The script unfortunately reduces Daphne to a "war girl" that falls in love with Bolland, who just wants to have a good time, unlike Rickson, who is obsessed with her, but keeps a distance. I am amazed when I see these war films that exalt death, without taking a moment to think that, almost as a rule, every war usually responds to economic interests, concealed by political motives. I feel they are almost horror movies, preparing us for the death of the characters in a sinister conflagration. Similarly, they bother me even more when I know that they are propaganda vehicles that sell the image of an army - in this case, foreign and distant from the events that motivate the war - and overlooks the real drama of local human beings who have to endure so much tragedy. Richard Addinsell provides such a pompous score to «The War Lover» that it makes you think you are watching a major historical event. But no. It is a romantic-war melodrama, with a mad soldier leading the events and making propaganda for his army, in those days when that institution was intervening in the genocidal war of Vietnam and when England was producing the progressive "free cinema", to which this film is completely alien. Avoid.
Review of The War Lover
