LastingAware The greatest movie ever!

Stephan Hammond It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Lucia Ayala It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Ortiz Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

bluesman-20 When the mini series came out in 1983 I was 13 years old. and not interested in Such things. My father on the other hand loved World War II history and he idolized Robert Mitchum. So this series was picture perfect for him. About a week ago I found The Winds of War on Youtube and watched it from beginning to end. After it was over the only thing I could utter was Wow. The Story read like a text book. and the acting on all parts was solid and perfect. Robert Mitchum was the heart and soul of this series. His Captain Victor "Pug " Henry was the man who seen every thing risked everything at his president's say and had a window to history. as a result Pug not only witness history put plays a important role in history. the Sub plots were not as strong as the main story. The Story of Rhoda Henry's affair with a family friend is weak. But still well done. The Subplot of Byron henry and Natalie Jastrow and their problems and romance takes up almost half of the main plot and while it is a a much needed part of the story. sometimes it spins it's wheels. Ali Macgraw while a gifted actress comes across at times as wooden, While Jan Michael Vincent delivers a steady job as Byron Henry And John Houseman as Arron Jastrow seems at times to be a intelligent man who is brilliant on paper but dumb in life. These sub plots drive the main story forward from the beginning of the War in 1939 to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Well done and a major accomplishment in story telling on TV. The Winds of War is a classic story. That has the emotional impact it deserves. And it makes you feel like you were there. A Well done job of writing and acting and a fantastic job done by Dan Curtis who holds it all together.

Robert J. Maxwell Well, a prologue for the USA anyway. The war had been going on for two years before our enemies attacked us.Mitchum and his family are our eyes and ears as things heat up overseas and in the White House. As a favorite of President Roosevelt, Victor "Pug" Henry gets to meet just about everyone of importance. I mean, he chats over breakfast with Roosevelt; he gets drunk with Stalin.Throughout it all, he's a man of genuine principle and something of a bore. He only insults people twice -- once when someone suggests a double date with a woman not his wife, and another when a German bureaucrat offers him a bribe. Otherwise, he sits and listens, intently and politely, something Mitchum was very good at doing.His wife, Rhoda, played by Polly Bergen, is a chatterbox and an airhead, easily impressed by pomp. She was the same character in Wouk's novel, which is at least as interesting as history as it is a story about characters.However, like "War and Remembrance", it sprawls all over the place like a fly on the wall with hundreds of lenses in its eyes. The story follows Mitchum's extended family and certain political notables all over Europe. Some, like Churchill and Von Roon, are rendered well. Hitler is a made-up stereotype, a cartoonish figure who lacks the charisma he had in the novel. Poor Gunter Meisner, who is saddled with the role, has had make up turn him into Frankenstein's monster as if, without the hint, we wouldn't understand that he's a bad guy.Wouk was a naval officer in World War II and served aboard several minesweepers in the Pacific theater. I love his "The Caine Mutiny" and re-read it every few years. It's focused on the character arc of one person, Willie Keith, and has practically no political overtones, although it has enough action and insight to satisfy whoever sits on the Pulitzer Prize committee.Willie Keith's romance is neatly sketched in and parallels his development as a man. Here, the romance is all over the place, compounded with pregnancy and allegiances that form cross currents. Rhoda has an affair with a peregrinating scientist. Pug is attracted to a much younger woman. Ali McGraw once loved Sloat but now she loves Byron, and she's a Jew and he's some kind of high-church Protestant. Gosh. Will it all work out? Mitchum is fine as Captain Henry. He has little to do except sit there with no expression on his face while someone voices an opinion. Wouk had one problem, here and elsewhere, that he seems unable to overcome. He simply CANNOT get inside the heads of any enlisted men. I don't know what the author's background was. He sounds working class when he speaks, yet he's a graduate of Columbia. But he seems far more comfortable with the upper echelon. I speak to you as an ex radioman second class.Whatever its flaws, it's an ambitious story and reflects an awesome amount of research, as well as some twisting of history for dramatic purposes.

bkoganbing The Winds Of War, part history part soap opera offers a Zelig like view of America's entrance into World War II in the years from 1939 to early 1942. Our protagonist Zelig is Robert Mitchum as Victor 'Pug' Henry a naval captain who has had a succession of shore assignments and yearns to get back to a ship. He knows war is coming and the promotions will come for those with battle command experience.In the meantime Mitchum is assigned as the naval liaison to the Berlin embassy where he sees and observes what is going on at the highest levels of government. He writes a report predicting the Hitler-Stalin pact which impresses one Franklin D. Roosevelt. They have history going back to the first World War when Mitchum was just a lieutenant. FDR himself asks for Mitchum to write him privately.That part of history is absolutely the case. Roosevelt distrusted official diplomatic channels in the State Department and always relied on a variety of sources for information. Returning as FDR after his critical and popular success in Sunrise At Campobello is Ralph Bellamy. He's just as good here.The history part one can read in all the books, but author Herman Wouk gave us soap opera as well. Mitchum is married to Polly Bergen and has three kids in descending order, Ben Murphy, Jan-Michael Vincent, and Lisa Eilbacher. All of them have their stories as well, mostly Vincent and his involvement and marriage to an older and Jewish woman Ali McGraw. That's a good part of the story, McGraw meets up with Vincent in Italy where he's leading a Bohemian type life and she is visiting her scholarly uncle John Houseman. McGraw and Vincent marry and have a child. But time and circumstances leave McGraw, Houseman, and the baby behind enemy lines while Vincent activates his naval reserve status and goes to war. A big part of the plot is his efforts to get back to his new family.Mitchum and Bergen are coming apart. Bergen had the best role in the series in my opinion. She was bored with her life and something of an airhead. She drifts into an affair with scientist Peter Graves. And Mitchum starts falling for Victoria Tennant, the daughter of a British diplomat.According to Lee Server's insightful biography or Mitchum, the original thought was to cast Ed Asner in the lead because in the novel Pug Henry is given that name because he has a bulldog like appearance. But some box office was needed so Mitchum who I guess is closest to being bulldog like of classic Hollywood leading men was hired. He carried the role well of a man who thinks life might just be passing him by in the career he has chosen.Wouk did his research well and the mini-series was just the format to present all the subtleties of his epic novel. The Henry family stories are nicely integrated into the real story of America going into World War II.This is epic television of the best kind.

jkochoa4966 This mid 1980s miniseries was quite a hit with American TV audiences. This movie would spawn a second miniseries, it's sequel War and Remembrance. There is some pretty good acting by Robert Mitchum and David Dukes but you will be quickly annoyed with Ally MacGraw's antics as a fearless Jewish Debutante who constantly and coincidentally tromps into scene after scene diving into more than a few dangerous predicaments (all avoidable) as War explodes across Europe. By the second episode I was wishing the Nazis would have got MacGraw's character in place of others...Jan-Michael Vincent is Ally's American love interest whose father (Robert Mitchum)is an important Naval Attache in Berlin who also coincidentally is an old buddy of FDR and even runs in a few of the same circles with some Nazi elite including some parties with who else...the Fuhrer. Polly Bergen plays Mitchum's wife, a shallow "Society worshipping" dame whose philandering is possibly hinted at. There are some other characters in this movie including the actor "Topol" who may have his most memorable performance as a Jew swept away early by the Nazi machine. There are some painfully realistic scenes showing the fate of the Jews during the Holocaust that left me stunned and some situations that are a bit unexpected. Lisa Eilbacher has a less prominent role as the daughter of Mitchum but made the most of her part in this miniseries. Also see Peter Graves (Mission Impossible) and Victoria Tennant in supporting roles as well as John Houseman (The Paperchase). If you can't get enough of this movie War and Remembrance picks up where this one leaves off on the eve of Pearl Harbor.