The Fourth War (1990)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Great Film overall

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

The plot is absurd, the logic is absent and the running back and forth across the east-west border is laughable.BUT - it's one of the greatest movies ever made anyway. Why? Because it got a view through correctly adjusted binoculars right! As 1 circle. NOT 2 touching circles.Million dollar movies, close to billion dollar movies from Hollywood, can't even get this simple fact right and it annoys me immensely. The annoying thing is that directors can get access to so much money and are not intelligent enough to get it right. If they spend a hundred dollars more they could buy a consultant to tell them things like that! But the directors are too dumb! Amazing.So a big HOORAY for The Fourth War!! The ONLY other film I remember that avoids this Hollywood dumb cliché is The Bridge On The River Kwai.And that's not all folks. The Fourth War lets the Russians speak Russian. I'm close to tears with enthusiasm! In the Hollywood world where Germans, Russians, Chinese and every alien from outer space speaks American this is groundbreaking. I know that most Americans are too dumb to read subtitles (or rather Hollywood think they are) but it renders authenticity in wast amounts to a movie.The ridiculous script is totally forgiven on these two grounds!!

THE FOURTH WAR is a menacing movie. Director John Frankenheimer does a superlative job with this and films like the MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, BLACK SUNDAY and RONIN. The novel by Stephen Peters is good and so is the screenplay. Roy Scheider (JAWS) plays Col. Jack KNOWLES who won't give an inch to the Soviet commander Col. Valachev played by Jurgen Prochnow (DAS BOOT). The snowball fight could have happened. I was talking to a retired American Intelligence Operative in the Niagara Region of Ontario and by his tennis court he revealed that KNOLL EAGLE is the codename for the American Shadow President who he believed to be none other than President JACK KENNEDY. That would make President George W Bush the second in command of AMERICA. KNOLL EAGLE comes from the 1963 alleged JFK assassination and the grassy knoll where there had to be a second shooter based on the number of shots fired and their accuracy that could not be duplicated. I believe that snipers are cowardly and advocate non-violence. I would just like to say congratulations President Kennedy on winning the cold war. Jack Knowles sounds close to Jack Kennedy Knoll Eagle. Harry Dean Stanton has a fine performance as General Hackworth. When the Russians and Chinese attack America at the same time will they torture me for calling them cowardly and uncivilized? Hopefully America will hold out and I won't have to find out. My military Intelligence course prepared me for interrogation but not torture. I gave the FOURTH WAR a 9 out of 10 for mentioning the AMERICAN nuclear detterent so directly.

A furiously intense story that takes place shortly after the Cold War where an American colonel (Roy Scheider - "Jaws") who has a troubled past, picks a fight with a high-ranking Soviet military officer, (Jurgen Prochnow - "Das Boot") that nearly escelates into a Tarantino-like standoff. Scheider and Prochnow are both good and so is Harry Dean Stanton ("The Straight Story"), who plays Scheider's superior officer and an old war buddy who is concerned about his friend. Director John Frankenheimer ("Ronin") is smart in making the film go smoothly and I got kick out of the scene where Prochnow and two other Russian officers briefly watch an American (college) football game on t.v., question it, and laugh at it.

I frankly expected more from a Frakenheimer movie. Roy Scheider as Colonel Jack Knowles is okay as the hothead military iconoclast who's not been the same since the war in Vietnam. He is sent to the German-Czech border and wages a personal vendetta against the short-fused Russian colonel Valachev, played quite menacingly by Jurgen Prochnow. The end of detente and the last Cold War battle? Well, Scheider throws a snowball at Prochnow and the fourth war starts. basically that's how. The premise is good but we are treated to a long and meandering tit-for-tat between two Army colonels that borders on the childish and wanton. While occasionally funny, this is not an intelligent movie. You'd be better off watching Toy Soldiers if you want a more gripping story.