THE WAR (1994)

Synopsis

Set in the small 1970’s town of Juliette, MS, The War opens on a shot of a rather old, knotty tree, which spreads over a clearing. In the tree sits Stu Simmons. His sister, Lidia arrives and informs him glibly, "He’s back." In a voice over, we learn that this will be the tale of Stu Simmons as told by his sister. They drive across the dirt-poor landscape to an old chimney, the ruin of their house, where Stu greets his father, Stephen Simmons.

In a dismal shack by the railroad tracks surrounded by nosey neighbors and crying babies, the Simmons have breakfast—burned by their mother, Lois Simmons. We learn, after Stu tries to wake his father and his father impulsively attacks him, that Stephen has been away, suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome after his service in Vietnam.
At the local drug store, Stu is attacked by Lester Lucket; and after he gets licked, his father starts to tell him how important it is to control your anger and how feeble war can be. In a flashback to Vietnam, we learn that Stephen was in a night attack with his buddy Dodge and they were badly beaten.

Lidia, meanwhile, with her two African-American friends, Elvadine and Amber, gather junk from Mr. Lipnicki’s junkyard to start building a fort in the Old Tree. At a nearby quarry, Stu and his friends, Marsh and Chet have a run in with the white-trashy Lipnicki children. Stu gets whooped. When he goes to start building the fort, he finds that his sister has beat him to the punch. He races her for dibs on building rights and loses. Stephen referees and moderates a solution where the children will share the fort. He also extracts a promise from Stu that he will try to make things smooth with the Lipnicki’s.

Efforts to build the fort together fail and the boys lose their rights to it when the girls win a dare to gather an unusual assortment of junk. Stu plays a prank at the quarry on the older Lipnicki boys turning them into enemies as opposed to making amends.

Stephen, who was employed by the state as a janitor, loses that job. Despite this, he has a dream to buy an old dilapidated house. He manages to get a mining job, which pays more. The house goes on the auction block and Stephen and Stu go to the county fair to bid on it. On their way, they have a confrontation with Mr. Lipnicki, who is as trashy and as ornery as his children. Stephen manages to keep things barely under control trying to teach Stu that anger doesn’t pay; only peace does. At the fair, Stephen places a silent sealed bid on the house. While he’s getting some cotton candy for Lidia and Lois, Stu is surrounded and whooped by the Lipnickis. Stephen breaks it up and, a short time later, he gives the cotton candy away to two of the Lipnicki brood. Stu does not quite accept this act of contrition.

At the fort, Stephen tells the rest of his Vietnam tale to Stu. In a flashback we see how he had to choose to stay with his wounded buddy or save himself. Ultimately he saved himself. Stu promises to work things out with the Lipnickis. Meanwhile, Lidia stands up to her teacher when she discriminates against Elvadine and spends some time in the principal’s office.
There’s a cave in at the mine and Stephen saves his co-worker, Moe’s, life. Stephen is hospitalized in a critical condition. Stu remains hopeful, but becomes foreboding. He reminisces through his father’s footlocker, using its lock for the fort. Meanwhile, the Lipnickis have found the fort and attacked it. Lidia tells Stu that she took most of the materials from the Lipnicki’s junkyard. They try to keep possession of the fort through a dare—Stu and Leo Lipnicki will climb the Water Tower and swim across the whirlpool inside as it drains. Leo backs out, but Stu completes the dare.

Stephen dies. When Lois tells Stu that his father is dead, he will not believe it and becomes incredibly angry, then incredibly sullen. After witnessing the Lipnickis shooting fireworks in the fort, Stu prepares for WAR. They drive the Lipnickis out with a live beehive and smoke bombs. However, the Lipnickis counter with fire and fists; and things get pretty ugly before Stu realizes his father was right about war. Billy Lipnicki, who throughout the story is the youngest, sheltered and dimmest Lipnicki, climbs the Water Tower during the battle to retrieve the key to the footlocker’s lock. He falls into the whirlpool. Stu and Leo jump in to save him. Stu, after a frantic try, resuscitates him. Stu now comes to grips with his father’s death.

A few weeks later, the auction bid comes through and is accepted. The Simmons get their run down house—but it’s home. Stephen’s hopes become reality and Lidia voices over lessons learned.

Elijah Wood's Performance as Stu Simmons

At 13 years of age, Elijah Wood turned in his finest and most intelligent performance to date in the 1994 production of The War. His career stood at a turning point, with his younger roles behind him and a question mark before him that many youth actors face at age 13. He admitted as much in interviews. He would have a year’s hiatus before his next role—a teenage smart-ass in Flipper and the 1996 production of The Ice Storm, where his tour de force performance gave many directional pointers to his style and ability to inhabit characters.

Elijah had played and would play lost boys who need to find their way through character development. Even Frodo Baggins (an adult) falls to some degree into this category. But Stu Simmons is not lost. We meet him as he sits in the core of a tree, a tree that is as much a symbol of life as the River in his previous film, The Adventures of Huck Finn. But here, we have a Southern KID, complete with convincing drawl, who lives from hand to mouth. In many respects, Elijah initially gives us an empty vessel in Stu Simmons—a vessel that Stephen Simmons fills.

We first get the sense of Elijah’s approach when he wakes his father in the house and his father tries to strangle him before he realizes its his son. We get Elijah’s agony look, which Frodo would bear proudly in the coming years and also, what I call the what-the-fuck look; one of surprise that is part of Elijah’s eye-repertoire. Elijah Wood knows full well that acting is not line delivery. He could have been successful as a silent movie actor. As early as the film The Witness, he could deliver wordless scripts through his eyes and face. He continues to do that, i.e. Sin City.
The Drug Store scene allows Elijah to fight (he does more fighting in this movie than in most any other) and also gets pounded. He knows how to be energetically defeated, bloody lip, swollen eye and pissed off look. We will see it again and again from The Faculty to Hooligans. We also see how Elijah can be gracious to other actors. With his eyes he helps transfer other actor's lines or underscores them. Very little of Kevin Costner’s Vietnam homily has Kevin Costner in frame. It’s either flashback or Elijah Wood. Elijah is the vessel, after all, being filled. There is also a father and son relationship between the Simmons that transcends love. There’s trust and a desire for Stu to follow his father’s advice.

At the quarry, Elijah shows us the angry side of the character—but anger for a cause. At every turn, Elijah shows us that Stu has values—he honors dares, promises and tries to perceive what his father says is hope. Yet, he never lets us forget that he is a KID. His infectious laugh in the second quarry scene and his impish looks do that. Why? Elijah knows that in order to have a kid grow up and take responsibility, you need to have a KID in the first place. He also shows the character's fallibility to translate his father’s wishes. Managing anger becomes cleverness and backfires turning the Lipnickis into dreadful enemies.

"Lipstick and rouge," the set-up line for a later echo, is the lens that Stephen wants his son to use. "As long as we have hope, there’s always a chance." Elijah crafts Stu to see it that way, but stumbles. His father is an honorable gentleman in a time and place where "son-of-a-bitch" requires an apology. The confrontation scene between Mr. Lipnicki and Stephen (Kevin Costner’s crowning moment in the film) is a perfect example of Elijah Wood’s Stu Simmons as a vessel going into overload. KID and logic clash. Yet, he cannot fault his father too openly. That’s not in his character. Many a youth actor would have just been bratty and snotty or snide. Not Elijah. He is a controlled performer; and that shows most after Stephen is injured, hospitalized and dies. But between Elijah’s BIG moment and the Fair Scene lies the high drama of the Water Tower dare. Elijah, in these middle films, does a lot with water (Huck Finn’s river and Flipper’s ocean). What this scene shows is how dumb one can be when applying such antics as flaunting death to protect the ownership of an old fort in a tree. However, the script gets to repeat itself to show the homily of applying the same skills to something more worthwhile when Stu saves Billy’s life.

Elijah Wood’s reaction to his father’s death is nothing short of brilliant. He starts with denial, wends into anger, builds the scene into a tirade against God, pours out the tears, rips into passion and ends with a burst of energy, which segues to the next scene, where we see him in sullen, dulled pain. I cannot think of any actor who could bring this range of emotions off and tear out a viewer’s heart, as Stu, the vessel, explodes.

"Why did they take him off, Ma. Because it cost to much?" (the life support).

"I understand, everybody just gave up on him!" (guilt)

When Lidia explains that Stephen is an angel now, Elijah builds the scene— "I sure hope he does a better job than when he was alive." (anger at who) then - "What the hell kinda loused up angel is that!" (Elijah anger).

But, he saves the best for last. When his mother says that his father has gone home, Elijah turns on the water works, followed by intense passion. "We’re his home, Ma. The stupid Lord can have him later. Why? Why does God take everything? Bad enough our home and our things. Why did he have to take my daddy? What did I do so wrong that he’d have to take my daddy . . . He could have took anybody—Charles Manson; super old people that have already been rotten a hundred years. My daddy was only 34 years old. I needed him more than you God. I needed him more. I want him back Ma."

This is the high point of the movie and Elijah Wood’s acting career to date (1994). It is so powerful that the rest of the movie verges on anti-climax, the fault of script and director, not actor. We move to The War sections much like The Lord of the Flies, with Stu being a bit like Ralph, the intelligent warrior. It’s an ensemble bit held together by Elijah Wood’s frames. And just so you don't think I am totally biased, he actually makes a small acting mistake in this scene. When Lidia tells him that she has taken the materials for the fort from the Lipnicki junkyard, Elijah begins his reaction one beat too early, before he had the info to actually deliver his line. (Whoops). Or was he doing it on purpose to keep the pace. Minor matter (maybe).

Another classic Elijah Wood moment comes when he stares at his father’s Bronze Star held in his hand, horrified at how the War has progressed. We will see that stance and look again, when he plays Jack Dawkins with the Judas Guinea in his hand in Oliver Twist and as Frodo Baggins holding the Ring at the River Anduin.

The second Water Tower scene is much like the perils of Pauline; but Elijah gets to act again with purpose as he tries to bring Billy Lipnicki back to life punctuating each chest punch with parts of his father’s homily of hope. Billy’s angel lines are touching and serve to bring the theme back to Stephen as an "angel." It allows Elijah to complete the character’s journey with the lines, "If dad’s watching, he can go now."

Elijah allows Stu Simmons to become the man of the house. When they take possession of the house, he says, "Lipstick and rouge, Mom," the only time he refers to her as Mom instead of Ma, a slight movement toward adulthood and, of course, the adoption of his father’s exact words.
The War is a credit to Elijah Wood, a work that his fans hold close in their hearts as his performance showed the fullest range of his physical and mental abilities to deliver his craft. No one can forget the iconic moment, when the dirty faced, angry Elijah Wood looks to heaven and chokes "I needed him more than you God. I needed him more." Anyone viewing this movie in its first release should have realized that this young actor had delivered the goods and earned his Top Billing. This reviewer believes it was one of the performances that catapulted him forward into select roles much to director’s delight. This 13-year-old actor would in the near future command another Top Billing—in cinematic history’s largest grossing film series—The Lord of the Rings.

Review

The War is a species of film released in the early 90’s with anti-war, anti-agression themes that require movie-goers to commit to the view that the Vietnam War is a symbol for war’s futility. It does this using a metaphor used often before—the loss of innocence; in this case, a child’s. What complicates this film’s approach is the child is not innocent. Stu Simmons is a struggling kid in poverty’s grip fending for himself and family, while his war hero, post-trauma stressed father is trying to find his sanity. Perhaps, the father, Stephen Simmons is the innocent lost and visits it upon his family and, particularly his son.

The film focuses on the need to put anger aside, forgive those who wrong you, compromise for the benefit of the community and move forward with the struggle for hope with joy in your heart. If it sounds like a sermon—it is. What makes this movie more preachy is Stu Simmons and his sister, Lidia's struggle to keep and defend a fort in a tree (a tree-house). On the surface, such stuff ranks with Lassie or My Friend Flicka, with a slightly more meaty homily and a different set of dirty-faced kids. Added to the message, in this message movie, is Lidia’s attempt to bring harmony and understanding between the races. The only thing missing is world peace.

Despite this overblown capsule of Hallelujahs, The War succeeds admirably for three reasons—the focus on the relationship between Stu and his father; the continual development of Stu as a mirror image of his father, only a more adult version; and a fairly sound script, which only falters when it gets on its soap box and preaches. Any writer can tell you, "show—don’t tell." When the script tells us the themes, it sags. When we are shown, it shines. Fortunately, with the exception of the ending, these snippets of hallelujah are peppered throughout and absorbed by the incredible performance of Elijah Wood.

That Elijah Wood carries this movie is undeniable. The viewer is captured by his skillful development of Stu Simmons and the final blossoming of the young adult. It’s much like David Copperfield's journey, only ignore the Dickensian sideshow. The father-son scenes generally work, Kevin Costner giving a competent performance with only one scene with the full depth of his ability. Lexi Randall’s performance as Lidia carefully blends her into her family image. You could pick her out as Stu Simmons' sister in a crowd. Unfortunately, as she has the voice overs, she get’s the pulpit and the more maudlin lines. LaToya Chisholm’s performance as her sarcastic black girlfriend, shines. Her timing, development and intonation are right on the money in all her scenes; and she dominates all her scenes. Mare Winningham as the mother, Lois, inhabits her role as the long suffering but supporting wife, admirably. But it is Elijah Wood’s force that allows us to like this movie, admiring his style, intelligence and facial expressions. There’s a Shakespearean caliber culmination scene, which rivets the viewer to the screen, much like being drawn into the vortex of the Water Tower, which figures prominently in a long list of visual symbols.

Of course, when one is preaching, one knows the bottom line. After Elijah Wood delivers his forceful scene, the movie travels along predictable, if not entertaining, lines. The kiddie War is quite adult; and the denouement, the bitter-sweet happy ending, is easily forecast. After all, you can’t preach to the congregation with fire and brimstone without letting them leave without a benediction. The need to tie up all the various homilies in Lidia’s closing voice over and her little why life is a bowl of cherries essay, could have been left to Laura Engels.

On the whole, The War is worthwhile as a showcase for Elijah Wood and is worthy of shelf space for his fans. His performance is a must for anyone who had only seen his later work in the Independants or in the massive Lord of the Rings. With an often solid script that has sometimes too much to say, this reviewer would award The War a solid B.

Trivia and Notes

The Tree used in The War is not a special effect. It’s a real old critter found in South Carolina and fitted with the appropriate set pieces.

The name of the Simmons family car is Flossy. And coincidentally, cotton candy plays a role (as a symbol for sweet peacemaking) and cotton candy is referred to in England as candyfloss.
The family raises needed money for Stephen’s union card by refunding coke bottles. After his death and just before the word that their auction bid had been accepted for the house, there’s a close up of a new pile of coke bottles accumulating under the porch.

After the first Water Tower scene, when Stu has won the dare, there’s a shot of Elijah Wood’s face lit by a stream of sunlight on his angelic eyes, a Money Shot as Dom Monaghan refers to some of his friend’s facial poses on film.

The actor playing Mr. Lipnicki is Raynor Scheine, which to this reviewer is one of the cleverest screen names ever (Rain or Shine, get it?)

When Elijah refers to the Lipnicki’s as the Limpdickies, he comes as close as he has come to a cuss word in any movie to date. His first use of the F word would be in The Faculty as he sits in the boy's bathroom nursing a bloody nose and a sore pair of testicles (oh, I’ll say it - balls).

Elijah tends to get beat up in his movies. In this one he sustains quite a number of lickings - but his lip is cut in the "best" possible manner to underscore his agony facial expression. He would continue to have his lip suffer in other films right up to the current Hooligans/The Yank/Green Street, set for release in the UK (2005), no distributor in North America to date.

When Stu calls Mr. Lipnicki a "son-of-a-bitch" he has risen to his father's level. Stephen, in the drug store scene, uses "son-of-a-bitch" in a different sense. However, Stephen automatically apologizes for using the epithet, while Stu must be prompted.

The Lipnicki children, as an ensemble team work very well in this film with their drawl and nastiness - "goody gumdrops, I found ma’self a looock." However, their dialog sometimes gets too erudite for comfort, especially when they ask for rhyming as a dare.
The delightful musical numbers in the work from the three girls gave a nice flavor to the period setting.

The film’s sub-theme of Lidia’s seeking acceptance by another race is similar to the later film Black & White where the young white teens seek to adopt rap culture. However, Lidia’s efforts take a biting edge, as the writer wanted to make a statement about segregation in the South. To do that he created that unbelievable creature Miss Strapford, with her silly wig and her Life is But a Bowl of Cherries routine.

There’s a trend in Elijah Wood movies to have a tower or high place to dangle. Elijah dangles twice in The Good Son, once in The Two Towers, and once in The Return of the King. There are also tree houses and forts in Radio Flyer, Paradise, The Good Son and hiding places in North and The Ice Storm. North's hiding place is a Department Store comfy chair at the local mall.

The ride down the quarry hill is reminiscent of the Radio Flyer ride and the future Bumblebee roof racer in The Bumblebee Flies Anyway.