Diminishing, futile Cold War

 THE FOURTH WAR (1990)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

When you watch a second-rate, ridiculous action picture like "The Fourth War," you have to check your brain at the door. Not that the film is brainless technically yet nothing in it seems remotely believable. 

Roy Scheider plays an Army colonel and Vietnam hero, Jack Knowles, who is something of a colossal screw up, a malcontent who has been moved and stationed in so many Army bases that you wonder why he did not lose his command already. His newest station is West Germany, right on the border of Czechoslovakia, and he has retained his command, albeit briefly. One bright sunny day, Jack is on patrol with other soldiers and notices that at the border, a refugee is trying to defect and is shot down by the Soviets. Jack impulsively orders his soldiers to fire at the Soviet helicopter yet thankfully there is resistance. But you can't keep a malcontent hero down for long. At night, Jack crosses the border and tries to engage the enemy, first by holding three Soviet soldiers down and forcing them to sing happy birthday because, you know, it is the Colonel's birthday. On yet another attempt in crossing the border (this becomes a running gag), Jack sets fire to their command post and throws a few grenades for good measure. All I could do was laugh at these ridiculous scenarios - is he trying to start World War III?

Scheider is a strong, competent actor who shows iron will in his character and his performance is enough reason to see the movie. Also watchable are Tim Reid as the Army's second-in-command who starts to wonder about Jack's motives (I am not sure what they are either other than continuing a fight that, by the time of the film's release, was over), and the always reliable Harry Dean Stanton as Jack's old war buddy who knows Jack is a screwup and a hero. Unfortunately Jurgen Prochnow as the Russian Colonel Valachev is given so little screen time that we never quite see him as an adversary until there is a twist involving another defector. I sensed the screenwriters were aiming for a cat and mouse game yet it never evolves into such a scenario.

"The Fourth War" is capably directed by John Frankenheimer yet its view of a diminishing, futile Cold War is not given enough expansion - we get scenes in and out of a Czech camp that look like Rambo leftovers. As unintentionally funny and sporadically entertaining it is at a tight 91 minutes, "The Fourth War" is so far removed from the psychological war games and mind control of Frankenheimer's "The Manchurian Candidate" that it resembles nothing more than a near-parodic parable.