M*A*S*H

Reviewed by Michael Peck
The Military Book Review

Mention M*A*S*H and most people think of the television series. That's a tragedy, because the original M*A*S*H is a movie that's far better than the Alan Alda sitcom. The TV show was warm and fuzzy. The movie is nasty, cynical and perhaps the best war satire ever made.

Based on the novel by Richard Hooker (a pseudonym for a doctor who served in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital), the film takes a sardonic look at an Army medical unit operating not far behind the front lines during the Korean War. Hawkeye (Donald Sutherland) and Trapper John (Elliott Gould) are surgeons who make their own liquor, grab nurses and grate on the nerves of the uptight Maj. Burns (Robert Duvall).

The television M*A*S*H characters are nice people caught in a bad situation. The movie characters are awful people caught in a bad situation. There's nothing loveable about a bunch of wild, arrogant, self-centered and hypocritical doctors. But in the end, they're only mirroring their environment, from the loudspeaker blaring inane announcements, to the classic football-game sequence in which two rival Army teams fight dirty.

Released in 1970, M*A*S*H is meant to represent Vietnam rather than Korea and may seem a little dated in today's world of volunteer militaries. The sexual innuendo was considered controversial at the time, though compared to what's on television today, it's practically G-rated. Thirty-five years later, M*A*S*H remains a brilliant look at the insanity and absurdity of war.