Matt!’s review published on Letterboxd:
One of Lumet’s finest achievements - how in the fuck does this have so few reviews?
Though it is not often spoken, military prison is a place which we soldiers dread. The American civilian penal system is notorious for many reasons, but it differs from its military counterpart in at least two major ways: 1) to be sent there, you have to have done some pretty heinous shit. It’s incredibly difficult to get kicked out of the military, and it’s even harder to get court-martialed and imprisoned—meaning you must’ve gravely fucked up. No petty theft or tax fraud here. 2) Whereas civilian prison guards are usually just there for the paycheck (or sometimes because they like it…yikes), military guards are there purely on assignment. This means that the people guarding you are also ones who can be, by all accounts, your peers, or even subordinates by rank. Both you and they alike once swore the same oath, and you’ve now disgraced that oath, spitting on everything they honor and stand for—how do you think they’ll treat you? Essentially, it’s a bad, bad place to end up.
Now, during wartime, that first point can be a bit of a different story. You don’t often see people deserting or disobeying orders when the threat level is low. But when shit hits the fan, especially when on foreign soil, you’re going to see some morally gray decisions made—and, due to protocol, those decisions will be strictly deemed either “right” or “wrong”, no matter how drastic or petty they may seem. However, the second point still firmly holds true in any and all cases.
Sidney Lumet’s The Hill begins with WWII British soldiers who’ve fallen on the “wrong” side of this divide and who are subsequently sent to a military prison in North Africa. From there, Lumet does his best to (from a script written by Ray Rigby, a previous military prison inmate) depict the various kinds of soldier archetypes that might arise from being given lawful but potentially unjust orders.
Of these men, you have: the man who believes wholeheartedly in structure and authority above all else, regardless of personal feelings; the man who recognizes the authority but takes a moral stand anyway; the man who sympathizes with the outrage against the orders but who cannot bring himself to disobey them; the man who relishes the personal power which the orders benefit him; the man who just wants to turn a blind eye and get by; the man who never stood a chance and disobeys by default; the man who has become so bitter that he couldn’t give a flying shit; the man whose rat-faced fickleness prevents him from being honorable in any capacity; the man whose fear and cowardice has rendered him incapable of decision; and the man who can’t be bothered to care less, because the orders do not affect him.
Now, the film tells us explicitly that these proceedings are unjust and immoral, making it easy for us to condone the actions of some men over others. Obviously, this is rarely a realistic scenario, especially in the military where orders are never an exaggeratedly clear-cut “right” or “wrong”, which is why we as soldiers are trained and expected to find ourselves in the shoes of the man who lives according to structure and authority above all else. Of course, a typically overdramatized movie such as this finds it necessary then to paint this man as the most evil of them all (shocker). I never really mind when films regularly do this because it makes for compelling storytelling, but I’m always amused by how hilariously and unabashedly obvious it all is.
I’ll gladly admit I’ve never found myself in any sort of situation even remotely similar to one such as this, but the above archetypes are ones I regularly encounter both in and out of the military. Hell, I’m sad to say I myself have been most of them at one point or another. They are, more or less, standard human tropes that exist when the emotional nature of man causes him to resist being tamed. Thus, what The Hill capitalizes on most is the futility of man’s fight against the regimented system.
Exceptional as both a prison drama and a military drama, Lumet thrust his cast into sweltering conditions almost as inhumane as the scenario which they were portraying and “brutally demanded” (his exact words to Connery) them to enact a “civilized” power struggle dripping in raw, volatile masculinity as palpable as the beads of sweat streaming down their faces. It’s an intimate character drama with a notably standout performance by Harry Andrews, but the most incredible feat here is Sean Connery’s ability to truly fucking act. Between Goldfinger (1964) and Thunderball (1965), I guess he wanted to prove he could play more than a smarmy ladykiller, and boy does he ever succeed in playing one tough, defiant son of a bitch.
Lumet was always phenomenal when it came to representing real, nonphysical human conflict, and this movie is no exception. Inescapable and insurmountable, this sucker earns my highest endorsement.
