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Don 'Red' Barry, Timothy Bottoms, Craig Bovia, Peter Brocco, Judy Howard Chaikin ... see more see more... , Eric Christmas , Kenneth Clark , Robert Cole , Maurice Dallimore , Robert Easton , Kathy Fields , Eduard Franz , Anthony Geary , Ed Gilbert , Ben Hammer , Wayne Heffley , Marsha Hunt , Jason Robards , Joseph Kaufmann , Kerry MacLane , Charles McGraw , William Mims , Byron Morrow , Alice Nunn , Marge Redmond , Jodean Russo , David Soul , Donald Sutherland , Tom Tryon , Diane Varsi , Gigi Vorgan , Bruce Watson , Sandy Brown Wyeth , Milton Barnes , Peter Virgo Jr.

The author of the famous late 1930's antiwar book Johnny Got His Gun wrote and directed this film adaptation. It concerns a nameless young soldier (Timothy Bottoms) in a veteran's hospital in the Worl... read more read more...d War I period. The young man has had his face blown off, he is without the use of any of his senses save touch, and also has no arms or legs. He is in a coma at the beginning of the film, and his doctors doubt that he will regain consciousness. This is also what they hope. A nurse, while changing his dressings, discovers that he is awake and responsive. The unrelieved awfulness of his situation is apparent to many. However, in order to keep the "good order" of the military, the regular Army general commanding the hospital will not allow the boy to be seen or his family notified, nor will he permit anyone to perform a mercy killing. Interspersed with this horror are flashbacks of the youth's life before the war. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

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PG, 1 hr. 40 min.

Directed by: Dalton Trumbo

Release Date: August 4, 1971

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DVD Release Date: May 12, 2009

Stats: 460 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (460)

  • imrealgod
    July 13, 2010
    imrealgod
    I agree with Greg's (366weirdmovies) review. What cold otherwise have been a masterpiece ends up as an interesting watch due to not-so-great execution. But I guess it'd have taken a director of high talent & caliber to present this genuine story on-screen efficiently. Surely wort... read moreh a watch once though, IMO.

    PS: I just got to know (via 'Search Results' here) that there's a remake to this, but I don't think I'd be checking it out now. However, if someone tells you that it's executed better than the original, it's only logical you go for the better one (unless you're one of those who heavily despises remakes).
  • tsigur
    March 29, 2010
    tsigur
    This is one of my favorite books of all time, so to see the film version I knew I would be somewhat disappointed. I think I liked seeing the story in my head a lot better than seeing a stoned Trumbo's version of it. I did enjoy the performances all around, though. Timothy Bottoms... read more, Sutherland, and Jason Robards are all amazing. I did think some of the dream sequences were a little too over the top (the midgets, come on!), but overall, I think the overall message is still as powerful. This is just one of those situations where Trumbo might have just let another director take a stab at it and it would have been more interesting.
  • bottcorecords1
    December 5, 2009
    bottcorecords1
    Dalton Trumbo was one of the top screen-writers in hollywood until being blacklisted in the communist witch hunts of the late 40s. He won an academy award, albiet anonymously for his screenplay of 1958's "The Brave One", and also wrote a pair of 1960 Oscar winning films ("Sparta... read morecus" and "Exodus"). Although his career never fully recovered to his position before the House Committee on Un-American Activities' investigation, in 1971, he was able to make his directorial debut on a film adaptation of his 1939 novel, "Johnny Got His Gun". What can be expected of a 65 year old, first time director? Surely not a masterpiece of a film, and yet that's what we got. Trumbo's story of a WWI soldier who is crippled by a mortar shell is of a vein similar to "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "The Best Years of Our Lives", in that it uses the devastating effects of war to question our beliefs of what life and death are really all about. To say the soldier is crippled is an understatement: he loses both his arms and legs, his hearing, and, although we never actually see it, his face is gone as well. He's left as nothing more than "a living pile of meat". The doctors, convinced he is for all intents and purposes brain-dead, keep him alive as a medical curiousity, to be studied and observed for research in further treatments, unaware he is conscious and can feel pain. All he can do is twist his head about, which the doctors attribute to "muscle spasms". The horror of this situation is only alleviated through various fantasies and dreams, oftentimes involving the love he left back home (Kathy Fields), Christ (Donald Sutherland), and the dead of his past, including his father (Jason Robards). Many of the flashbacks involving the soldier's family were taken directly from Trumbo's actual boyhood (in fact, the room where Trumbo's father died was used when filming the death scene of the main character's father). It's difficult, though, to tell which are the flashbacks and which are pure dreams from his imagination. It's possible that everything is a dream (something he acknowledges to himself through his subconscious). His mother (in his dreams) tells him only the soul is real, it's the flesh that's false. Some of his dreams are particularily powerful, such as his conversation with Christ, as he watches the holy carpenter crucifixes to mark the graves of dead soldiers. Christ tries to help him with his dilemma (he imagines a rat crawling on his face): "you should try to knock the rat off, and if there is no rat, it's only a dream- but I can't touch the rat, I have no arms". Christ has no answers for him. Some scenes in this film are so painful, so senseless they must be speaking to the then-fresh wounds of Vietnam. But really, war of any era is just as senseless when it comes to the human aspect. It should be recognized that it's an ugly thing to glorify war, and making it seem like it's anything other than the tragic waste of human life that it is, is reprehensible. Johnny Got His Gun gives us humanity reduced to it's most fragile state, and then asks us to judge what price is worth that cost.
  • 366weirdmovies
    November 16, 2009
    366weirdmovies
    An enemy shell blasts a WWI doughboy, leaving him armless, legless, blind and deaf; the army keeps him alive, and he slips in and out of memories, dreams and fantasies while trying to figure out how to communicate with the outside world. A great idea and likely a great novel, bu... read moret the movie (directed by the book's author) was uneven; moments of tremendous emotion and wicked humor alternate with mundane dramatic moments and unconvincing acting by the younger thesps. The best scenes featured Donald Sutherland as a compassionate but ultimately impotent Jesus Christ. Luis Bunuel was originally set to direct and in fact wrote parts of the screenplay; had he been able to commit to the project, it likely would have been a classic rather than an interesting attempt.
  • flixsterman
    September 8, 2009
    flixsterman
    Not your average "guns & glory" war film. In fact, this is a script that could have easily been adapted for The Twilight Zone or Tales From the Crypt. Scary and Powerful.
  • pier007
    June 13, 2009
    pier007
    One of the most oppressive, disturbing and truthful declarations against the barbarity and futility of war.
  • fb1142797643
    December 16, 2011
    fb1142797643
    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 str... read moreuggling 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.
  • gator681
    March 31, 2010
    gator681
    It is said that our entire lives flash by in the moments before we die. Depending on how you look at it, Joe Bonham(Timothy Bottoms) may not be that lucky, having been blown to smithereens in the trenches during World War I. All that could be saved of him are his torso and the ... read moreessential functions of his brain. His only sense of the outside world comes through sensations felt on his skin. After he is stabilized by Colonel Tillery(Eduard Franz), Joe is stuck in a utility closet. While not yet fully aware of the horror of his situation, Joe thinks back to the last night before he left for the war, heeding the call for volunteers made with patriotic bluster in this fight for democracy, as he puts it. As he makes his farewell to his girlfriend Kareen(Kathy Fields), she begs him to reconsider and do the sensible thing by making a run for it. Joe feels his present(filmed in black and white) is a nightmare compared to his memories(filmed in color) which take a turn to the surreal with the appearance of Christ(Donald Sutherland) who is on hand to escort dead soldiers on to the next stop.

    To those squeamish, I would like to point out that "Johnny Got His Gun," written and directed by Dalton Trumbo, is not graphic. Rather, it is emotionally intense and powerful in addressing the topic of the disposability of soldiers during wartime head on. But it is not only those lives that are mourned but also those people who worked their entire lives with little reward like Joe's father(Jason Robards) who we first see at his funeral. The same can also be said of Kareen's father(Charles McGraw) who also provides unexpected kindness to the couple in such a cruel world.
  • Ivan6655321
    May 7, 2011
    Ivan6655321
    I have watched enough 'pacifist' war films in the past, but I can safely say that "Johnny Got His Gun" is the most emotionally penetrating of the bunch that also extracts tenacious hope out of despair. What makes this film, masterfully directed by Oscar winner Dalton Trumbo (who ... read morewon for penning the great romantic film "Roman Holiday"), very effective in what it tries to impart to its audience's sensibilities about the inhumanities of war is its pure focus and sheer devotion to its main character.

    In other films dealing with the same underlying sentiments, the message and emotions are too widely distributed to a variety of characters that they sometimes appear to be too far-fetched, hence meager in overall effect. But in "Johnny Got His Gun", which beautifully reigns on the longings and memories of the titular character and wholly explores the landscapes of his entirety, Dalton Trumbo maximized the whole film and merged Johnny's personal struggles as an extreme amputee with his flinching anti-war sentiments. It ultimately came out as a spell-binding commentary not just pertaining to the sheer senselessness of conflicts, but also regarding the endurance of the soul.

    Timothy Bottoms portrays the quadruple amputee Johnny with his trademark sad eyes and deadpan energy. Through his flashbacks and overlaps of fantasies and retained memories, he leads us through an unforgettably cerebral journey inside the psyche of an ordinary man who, as told to him even by his father (great performance by Jason Robards), is nothing 'unusual'. This is not a soldier whose life is filled with overachieving decorations or countless belligerence in the battlefield. He is a simple man with the same existential woes like other people usually have. But what separates him among others is his sense of 'hope'.

    This film could have easily drifted into an unfathomable territory of pity and despair. But with Dalton Trumbo's attention to emotional balance, while enhanced by Jules Brenner's cinematography, "Johnny Got His Gun" surprisingly tiptoes between sets of spirited humor amidst its pessimistic undertones. But aside from all of these, the film is also quite articulate in its seemingly elegiac approach to religious 'faith'.

    Eccentrically surrealist as it may seem to be, Donald Sutherland's 'Christ' is not shown as an omniscient observer but as a man of wisdom capable to immerse. He gambles with the soldiers, he fancies carpentry and he also signs checks. This can simply be a visual injection by Luis Bunuel who did an uncredited screenplay contribution to the film, but it is still subtly affecting in its approach.

    "Johnny Got His Gun" fully suggests that in times of chaos, especially those created and prolonged by the follies of men, God does not merely watch from above but guides in close contact. But also as what the film's theme suggests, he is also imperfect in his own right.

    There's a significant exchange in the film where the military doctor asks the priest to convince Johnny to put his faith in God. The priest, after seeing the poor condition of Johnny's physical predicament, tells the astute military doctor that he will not risk testing Johnny's faith against his (the doctor) stupidity. Johnny is a product of the military doctor's profession, after all. It's a conversation rooted out from situational desperation but it's quite obvious that the failure of the military doctor to reply to the priest's indirect accusation alludes to his acceptance of the generalized mistakes created by his occupation.

    The film, although has raised some potent promises regarding the condition of men of duty like Johnny, is a bleak observation of casualties and the secretive tendencies of 'war' and its officials. And as if out of nowhere, it is evenly contrasted with the demonstrativeness of a 'freak show' on a traveling carnival. The latter may exploit, but it does not, in any way, take lives so relentlessly as the first.

    Many films have shown emotional desensitization in the middle of violence and carnage. But "Johnny Got His Gun" does not put itself along those lines that may just evoke mindless, machismo-filled indifference; the film is, after all has been said, a liberating study of the maddening physical limitations of a man nowhere to retreat but his collective dreams and his conscious mind. It tells of the imminence of hopelessness yet it struggles for life. Dalton Trumbo and Johnny. They prefer the 'carnival' more.
  • jimbotender
    September 16, 2008
    jimbotender
    A touching anti-war movie.Curious to find out?The enthralling hospital events are cut in accordance to Johnny's memories of his past life...before becoming a "plant" in the battlefield.So the doctors think.Trumbo justifies his hero's sanity through symbolic divisions and a helpin... read moreg nurse yet the inevitable dominion will arrive.Johnny's actions are noted in his mind as either mistakes or beneficial herbs.Trumbo might not be a director and manages on his sole feature to grab our soul's most tearing part.

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Critic Reviews

Roger Greenspun
May 9, 2005
Roger Greenspun, New York Times

Although Mr. Trumbo is primarily a screenwriter, screenwriting is only the worst of the film's several failures. Full Review

Roger Ebert
October 23, 2004
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Instead of belaboring ironic points about the "war to end war," Trumbo remains stubbornly on the human level. Full Review

Ken Hanke
July 21, 2010
Ken Hanke, Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)

Problems aside, there's a cumulative power to the material and an idea that's impossible to ignore. Full Review

Fernando F. Croce
January 12, 2010
Fernando F. Croce, CinePassion

[Trumbo's] filmmaking is frugal -- jump-cuts state the passage of time, a languid fade to yellow signifies solar warmth. Full Review

January 12, 2010
TV Guide's Movie Guide

Trumbo, directing his first film, drives home his points in a somewhat obvious, often awkward fashion that is overly talky, but so disquieting is his story and the reality underlying it that it is dif... Full Review

Dan Lybarger
May 6, 2009
Dan Lybarger, eFilmCritic.com

Sadly, time has not made this story any less relevant or potent. Full Review

Emanuel Levy
April 19, 2009
Emanuel Levy, EmanuelLevy.Com

Dalton Trumbo (member of the Hollywood Ten) sole directing effort is one of the most hauntingly powerful anti-war film made, an experimental work that's effective as realistic portrait of war's damage... Full Review

John A. Nesbit
April 4, 2009
John A. Nesbit, Old School Reviews

strong historical and literate adaptation of a truly remarkable anti-war classic Full Review

Pete Croatto
March 28, 2009
Pete Croatto, Filmcritic.com

a sobering, grueling look at us Full Review

Rob Gonsalves
November 9, 2008
Rob Gonsalves, eFilmCritic.com

The primal power of the story -- a young man trying to find some sense in what's happened to him -- prevails. Full Review

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  • Which Canadian-born actor plays Jesus in Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun?  Answer »
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