The Fourth War

Directed by John Frankenheimer, The Fourth War details the chaos that ensues after two soldiers (Roy Scheider’s Colonel Jack Knowles and Jürgen Prochnow’s Colonel Valachev) embark on a petty grudge match near the the West German-Czechoslovakia border. It’s an oddball premise that’s employed to partially watchable yet mostly tedious effect by Frankenheimer, as the filmmaker, working from Kenneth Ross’ screenplay, delivers a slow-moving drama that does, by the very nature of its premise, suffer from a distressingly repetitive midsection focused almost entirely on the protagonists’ escalating pranks (eg Knowles sets a Russian guard tower on fire, Valachev blows up Knowles’ car, etc, etc). It’s clear, then, that The Fourth War‘s relatively tolerable atmosphere is due predominantly to the solid performances and very limited smattering of compelling sequences, including an electrifying interlude wherein Knowles is angrily confronted by his superior officer (Harry Dean Stanton, in a woefully small role), but the movie otherwise remains fairly lifeless for the duration of its short-yet-not-short-enough running time – which, despite an appreciatively over-the-top and flat-out ludicrous climax, cements its place as a misfire that rarely, if ever, justifies its very existence.

** out of ****