Review of Catch-22 (1970) by Donald W — 13 Aug 2008

This movie is based on a very good book. The movie is fairly true to the book but lacks the detail of the book. The movie has some of the best comic actors of the early 1970's. The book and movie are not linear in flow.

They jump all over the place but eventually everything fits together. The book does this better than the movie. You need to read the book before you see the movie. The story is set in 1945 in the last month of the war in Europe on a small island in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Italy.

It is about a B-25 bombarder named Yossarian that wants to go home after flying 50 missions. The war is almost over but the war in Italy is still going on and all the new flight crews are being shipped to the Pacific.

In order to keep flight crews the commanding officer keeps raising the number of missions before a person can go home. Yossarian tries to convince the base doctor that he's crazy. The doctor tells him that only a crazy man would fly combat missions but if he asks not to fly then he must not be crazy; therefore, he has to fly.

That's the catch-22. The book was written in 1955 and is a satire of 1950's America and was using World War II as a backdrop. The movie was made in 1970 during the Vietnam War and is more of an anti-war comedy and only uses a small part of the satire of the book.

The actors played the character's a little more over the top than they are portrayed in the book. The book is funnier because the characters seem so real. In the movie only Alan Arkin, who plays Yossarian plays his character as written in the book.

The rest of the actors exaggerate their characters for laughs. Strangely though, the movie was filmed in North Africa and except for the B-25 bombers and the 1940's uniforms it looks like it could be set in modern day Iraq or Afghanistan.

There are a few nude scenes which got the movie an R rating. I'd seen parts of the movie on TV when I was in college but of course it had been edited. I didn't see the uncut version until I bought the DVD.

I do remember seeing a Life Magazine when I was in high school with pictures of all the B-25 bombers used to make the movie. I think it was the last time that many B-25's were every flown together.