Red Sky at Morning

1944, and off Dad (Crenna) goes into the Navy after taking wilting Southern Mum (Bloom, slipping into Vivien Leigh's shoes) and son (Thomas) to a Mexican hideaway mansion. From there develops an unusually blatant mixture of voyeuristic wish-fulfilment as teeny high school petting and chicken games are laid aside by sons who follow their fathers, unquestioning, to the battlefront. As if by sympathetic magic, for instance, the moment Thomas actually screws his girlfriend, the moment he takes over his father's ritual manly tasks (such as helping an artist friend lug yet another of his hero-busts up to his private Mount Rushmore where Bogart, Chuchill and DiMaggio rub shoulders), comes the news that Dad has been blown up. Any number of loving, lying shots of touselled heads windblown against the sky, gamely tearful faces saying goodbye. The only good thing is that Vilmos Zsigmond's photography manages to wring a grain or two of realism from those faces.