Patriotic Celebration Overwhelms ‘Heroes’

Now, for only the second time ever, you can see it on television.

If you missed America’s lopsided, feel-good war the first time around, “The Heroes of Desert Storm” beckons at 9 p.m. Sunday on ABC (Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42), missiles blazing, flags waving, success stories streaming, George Bush gushing.

Far from being the mother of all movies, however, “The Heroes of Desert Storm” is midwife to history through a strainer. By design, it filters out the big picture in order to present the Persian Gulf War solely from the perspectives of troops and their loved ones.

“The Heroes of Desert Storm” does eloquently recall how the war altered lives of ordinary people, from professional soldiers already on active duty to reservists for whom the military was nothing more than part-time work to families and friends left behind. While applauding heroes and damning terrorism, Lionel Chetwynd’s script also pauses somberly to note not only American dead--specifically a female reservist who perished in that devastating Scud attack on a U.S. temporary barracks in Dhahran--but also slain Iraqi soldiers, their hurried Moslem burial in the field presided over by a U.S. Army chaplain who is a rabbi.

So emotion you get.

Enlightenment you don’t.

The movie evolves in an information vacuum. Except for one fleeting sequence, there are no Saudis here, no U.S. allies contributing to the liberation of Kuwait, no hint of the war debate that raged in Congress and the streets before the bombing of Baghdad, no one lost to friendly fire, no culture clash with Arabs, no media pests irritating the military, no subtleties and, above all, no context.

Who is this guy Saddam Hussein we’re fighting, anyway, and why did he set off this crisis in the first place? Forget it. Like Omar Sharif first appearing as an anonymous speck on the desert horizon in “Lawrence of Arabia,” Hussein emerges without explanation as he fulfills his role as mighty villain.

In broad outline, Hussein’s forces rape a place called Kuwait. We kick butt. We come home. End of movie. Run credits.

Nothing about Iraq vis a vis Iran. Nothing about the importance of Kuwait’s oil. Nothing about alleged mixed signals given Hussein by former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie. Nothing about nothing. From this narrow account, Iraq might as well be Indiana and Kuwait be Kansas.

President Bush was recruited to tape a 65-second preamble to Sunday’s memorial, and the message he delivers from the White House is a generic one that celebrates the United States and “the American heroes of our time” without specifying this war.

Not that he needs to.

The movie begins by monitoring the day-to-day routine in the lives of various sets of Americans who will be personally affected by the war. Meanwhile, the U.S. military continues its buildup in response to Iraq’s aggression and the taking of Western hostages. Then very quickly, it seems, the battle of Baghdad is under way, as the screen is taken over by news footage of tracers wildly zigzagging the night skies, backed by Sylvester Levay’s pounding, hard-driving, adrenaline-pumping music.

The same music accompanies much of the re-created combat footage. See, war can be exciting.

“The Heroes of Desert Storm” arose from a desire by ABC and executive producer-director Don Ohlmeyer to make instant movies about true-life events. Copying the style of “Special Bulletin,” the vastly superior movie from Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz that he produced for NBC in 1983, Ohlmeyer has achieved a heightened sense of intimacy and reality by shooting with videotape instead of film.

Thus, by liberally threading his dramatization with actual ABC News footage and combat pictures supplied by the approving Pentagon, he achieves a quasi-documentary effect. On the screen, for example, are those famous actual videos of banged-up POWs who were made by their Iraqi captors to appear before a TV camera. Then cut to actor Michael Champion as Marine Chief Warrant Officer Guy Hunter Jr., whose harrowing experience as a captive includes being forced at gunpoint to make a televised anti-war statement.

Such juxtapositions of reality and re-creation, while dangerously misleading in a news or news-related magazine program, are a perfectly appropriate means of storytelling in an entertainment program whose intent is clear.

Reports have already surfaced that some of the movie embellishes reality. Such are the perils of docudrama. Very obviously it is docudrama, however. And although the prisoner and combat sequences are especially authentic looking, anyone coming away from “The Heroes of Desert Storm” believing he has watched an ABC News documentary has a serious problem.

The movie’s serious problem lies not in the way it is presented but in what --and what it doesn’t --present.

One could argue with merit that only a cave dweller wouldn’t be acquainted by now with the background and events leading up to the Persian Gulf War. However, one could argue with equal merit that the type of human-interest stories depicted in this movie are at least as well known. After all, with at times little else available to be reported given Pentagon restrictions on the media, the one story that the press did cover very thoroughly was the war’s impact on ordinary citizens. And such stories proliferated further in the welcome-home euphoria of the war’s aftermath.

With no insights to offer and no new stories to tell, then what is the purpose of “The Heroes of Desert Storm” other than to join the marketing campaign seeking to cash in on the war?

Besides, the celebration may be premature. The tone of this movie conveys a message that Operation Desert Storm put down tyranny in the Gulf and ended the threat from Iraq. Judging by recent headlines, however, someone forget to tell that to Saddam Hussein.