Three Rivers Film Festival: The Forgotten

A touching coda and some incisive moments inform "The Forgotten," a Pennsylvania-made movie by Pittsburgh writer-director Vincente Stasolla that premieres Friday in the 2003 Three Rivers Film Festival.

Made in the spirit of the rugged, raw-boned war movies that Samuel Fuller directed, especially in the 1950s, "The Forgotten" also has one of their liabilities: budgetary constraints that impair the ability to smooth narrative points and place the imperiled American military personnel in a more clearly depicted battle landscape.

The film is set in October 1950 near the 38th parallel shortly after the U.S. Army invasion of North Korea during what we now call the forgotten war.

Two tanks become disengaged from the rest of their platoon and are mostly stationary thereafter as they await the safest opportunity to rejoin their unit.

When the sergeant in charge is killed, William Byrne (Randy Ryan), a corporal from Missouri, takes charge. War in any form ("Why are we doing this to each other?") runs counter to his pacifist nature.

It's not quite clear if he's an ordained minister or simply a religious layman, but the film's perspective toward all levels of enmity is defined by his essential decency and his familiarity with the contents of a Bible given to him by his bride back home, Elizabeth (Janan Raouf).

Among the lower-ranking soldiers under his command are the combative Jake O'Brian (David McMahan), the craven George Packs (Stephen Kilcullen) and the less distinct Phillip Cook (Salim Rahman) and Michael Anderson (Malcolm Barrett).

They're soon joined by Korean POW Jong Soo Kim (B. Ouyang).

"The Forgotten" raises many pertinent themes (euthanasia, responsibility to the captive, wariness of one's compatriots) but does not fully digest each.

Like the characters in Jean-Paul Sartre's "No Exit" and Luis Bunuel's "The Exterminating Angel," two masterworks of existentialism, the characters are not only isolated but trapped with each other, which gives them a microcosmic quality so Stasolla can explore contradictions within each.

Although it serves a thematic - not to mention budgetary - function that the Americans are disoriented in terms of locale, it hurts the film more than it should that we have no perspective on the enemy in what is, after all, the context of war. There's too little reason the Americans stay put.

Mark Rabinowitz shot the Korean footage in black and white and did William's U.S. scenes with Elizabeth, including memories and fantasies, in gorgeously warm color.

The film is handicapped, though, by grayish black and white that lacks the sharp resolution and distinct hues of the old pictures it recalls, a problem consistent with most attempts at black and white on today's film stock.

The one problem with the many lyrical color cutaways is that, after the first one, they add nothing to our understanding of the Byrnes' idealized marriage.

Everyone is likely to be touched by the final passage and to be impressed by a work more concerned with the heart of the war effort than with the bravado.

The Forgotten premieres at 7:30 p.m. Friday, $25 premiere includes party; and 2 p.m. Monday at Regent Square. Crafton's Ed Vogel, president of the district's Korean War Veterans Association, will lead a discussion after Monday's matinee.