Night Wars

In the category of action video trash, David A. Prior’s top films, among which Night Wars is a standout, are the equivalent of Steven Spielberg’s films for children. Like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Hook, Prior’s movies have the power to transport us adult viewers back to childhood. Whereas we had to grow up and accept the ambiguity and unsettling incomprehensibility of reality, Prior is still running around with a cap gun in the woods behind his house, where with rose-tinted glasses made up of the aesthetics of eighties action B-movies and guided by juvenile logic, he conducts one heroic battle after another. As the Peter Pan of trash, he calls on us to set aside our everyday glumness in which we are mired by today’s “realistic” and “sophisticated” action blockbusters and to return with him to a world which he will straight-up tell us is “a dream. anything can happen”. With Night Wars, he again lays out before us an absurd idea of war corresponding to the perspective of a twelve-year-old boy who thinks black-and-white adventures are now too naïve for him, but whose idea of seriousness and bleakness comes from mainstream comic books and simple-minded war movies. Of course, the film also contains action choreography and dramaturgy that bring to mind boys playing at soldiers, when the enemy’s cannon fodder never hits anything, the best cover in a firefight is a thin tree and the heroes run through the pandemonium of war without helmets (though it must be noted that their eighties manes are certainly more durable than a bit of sheet metal). However, everything that people associate with Prior based on his most famous film, Deadly Prey, is present here only as a substrate for an utterly breathtaking narrative that we can describe as a delirious mix of Platoon (1986), Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Jacob’s Ladder (1990), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Inception (2010) and the films of Satoshi Kon, the vast majority of which came out after Night Wars, as can be seen from the years of production. The master’s forward thinking is further confirmed by such eccentricities as a long shot of veterans contemplating the stigma of war on the shore of a lake conceived as a composition in the mould of Yasujiro Ozu and a reference to his own work that was relatively innovative for its time (the protagonist has a poster from one of Prior’s earlier films in his home). After all, the film’s concept indicates that Prior should not be underestimated as a mere action journeyman without a distinctive vision: the nightmares of two Vietnam veterans begin to seep into reality, so they have to venture into their dreams in order to win the war and save a friend who was captured in Vietnam. The numerous details connected with the intertwining of reality and dreams and the transition from reality to dream are paralysing with their inventiveness, as is the bizarre absurdity of the absolutely serious concept. The sequence involving the protagonist’s first journey into his dreams under the watchful eye of his fellow veteran is utterly phenomenal, as it actually breaks the fourth wall of fiction and, like present-day blockbusters, shows us its ideal viewer for a moment and becomes both a guide and a blessing for the desired viewer reaction. The film’s richness of interpretation is confirmed by the fact that the “Vietnamese” are played by guys in blue uniforms that look like pyjamas. Everything is capped off with a brilliant climax in which Mr. Prior – unlike his mentor Winsor McCay – doesn’t merely leave us looking astonished like Little Nemo falling off the bed after a grand dreamlike adventure. No, like a true Peter Pan, he staves of the nightmares and again lays before us an enchanted place in the forest where his lost boys with cap guns can still go out and play. (08/12/2013) (less) (more)