Review of Johnny Got His Gun (2008) by Paul P — 16 Dec 2011

It's a strange coincidence that I saw "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" just three days ago, because I didn't realize it and "Johnny Got His Gun" share the same experimental scenario: the subjective perceptions of a radically disabled man, daydreaming of happier times while struggling to communicate with his caretakers. The main difference is that "Johnny"'s Joe Bonham (Timothy Bottoms, dominating the screen in his debut film role) is presumed to be in a non-thinking, vegetative state, while "Diving Bell"'s Jean-Do was always known to be cognizant.

Maimed soldier Joe lies in a hospital bed, tucked away in a linen closet to save space. His face is half blown away and tactfully covered, and his arms and legs have been amputated. Blind and unable to speak, he has a limited interface with the world, and whatever trivial movements he makes are viewed as involuntary spasms. His identity is unknown to his doctors, and he is kept alive only as a medical curiosity.

He tries to make sense of the situation while recalling past events from his life, mostly focused on his gentle father (Jason Robards) and the girl he left behind. The hospital scenes are in black and white, while the flashbacks are in color. The color material also includes a few tepid fantasies involving Donald Sutherland as an unlikely, low-key Jesus Christ.

"Johnny Got His Gun" was the only film directed by Oscar-winning screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, best known today for being infamously blacklisted during the McCarthy era. "Johnny" was adapted from his own 1939 novel (other Trumbo credits include "Thirty Seconds over Tokyo," "Papillon," "Roman Holiday," "Spartacus" and "Exodus"). And yet surprisingly, his screenplay is more problematic than his direction: Joe's interior monologue is far too wordy and overelaborated to be realistic. There's always a sense of him adding extra detail for the audience's benefit. And Bottoms' performance is not so sharp, and this just doubles the text's clumsiness.

Watch for David Soul ("Starsky and Hutch") and Tony Geary ("General Hospital") in small roles, early in their careers.