How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

This is not a perfect film, but it was made at the end of an era when films about World War II were made for veteran audiences. Movies like Tora Tora Tora and the Battle of Britain were about battles and almost completely ignored the human stories. Yanks is a pioneer in the genre of wartime humanism. Without Yanks we would not have films like: Hope & Glory, Swing Shift, The Pianist, Mrs. Henderson Presents, Bon Voyage, Charlotte Grey, Radio Days, Das Boot, Rosenstasse, Downfall, Black Book, and even Schindler's List.Adding to the strength of the new genre is a certain authenticity the film maintains. From the unabashed male nudity in the showers to the grimy black Victorian buildings of pre Thatcher Britain. Perhaps it's because the film was made when any Brit over the age of 45 would remember the era very clearly, so it wasn't as much of a history film when it was made as it is now. Despite its authentic feel, the period details are not always correct. The men's hairstyles are too long for servicemen and there are other little flaws in the costuming, hairstyles, and props. However, the film's worst problem is the editing. The movie looks like it was a much longer film that was cut down - and that is exactly what happened. The half hour that was removed from the final cut made every story choppy and incomplete. The romance is on again/off again without explanation, and some scenes seem to be thrown in that are unrelated to the storyline, like the black soldiers at the dance hall. Either a different edit or director's cut would improve the film considerably. Despite these issues, the film is still an important one, and worthy of watching.

In 1942, hundreds of thousands of American soldiers were pouring into Great Britain in preparation for the eventual invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe. They were young men far from home in a war-ravaged country with some disposable income and not all that much to do until D-Day arrived. Surrounding them was a land full of kids, old men and young women with very few British chaps around. Yanks is a story about the relationships that spawned between those American boys and those British girls that encompassed love, companionship, exploitation and everything in between.When young enlisted men Matt and Danny (Richard Gere and Chick Vennera) roll into England with the U.S. army, it doesn't take them long before they connect with Mollie and Jean (Wendy Morgan and Lisa Eichhorn). But while the cheeky Mollie and the somewhat shy Danny waste no time falling in love, it's a rockier road for Matt and Jean. He's immediately attracted to her, but she has a sort-of-beau named Ken (Derek Thompson) who's serving with the British forces in Malaysia. Ken and Jean are two kids who grew up in a small town with everyone always expecting them to wind up together and it's not easy for her to open her heart to another man, especially an American who wants things his own way.The same hesitation is seen in the relationship between an army captain named John (Williams Devane) and a lady of the manor named Helen (Vanessa Redgrave). Helen's husband is also away at war and her friendship with John has been platonic for a while, but they both know where it's heading. The truth is that everybody knows the American GI's will be romancing and coupling with the local ladies and no one really knows what to do about it except look the other way.These filmmakers do a great job slowly unfolding love affairs, both meaningful and not, amidst a simmering stew of resentment, jealousy and cultural clash. Yanks gently captures the amoral nature of war-time living where people try to maintain some semblance of normality and end up just taking what they need to survive. When looked at coldly, there's something seedy about these arrogant Americans swooping in and taking advantage of British women left alone by the demands of war, yet director John Schlesinger never lets the audience forget that life isn't cold. It's warm and it's now and it wants. Strangers brought together by the most horrible of circumstances are still people who want to be loved and hate to be alone.This film dispenses with a lot of the traditional obstacles that get chucked in the path of lovers. Ken makes only a brief appearance and the disapproval of Jean's parents doesn't seem to keep her and Matt separated for an instant. The story can get away with that because we know where these American boys are going and it isn't back to the States with their British loves in tow. It's to the bloody beaches of Normandy, so neither they nor their new women have much time to waste.With delicate performances and engrossing direction, Yanks is a good movie. It's not for those who flinch at unvarnished romance, but all but the harshest heart will be able to float along with this film's earnest intentions.

Was sad to see the passing of Tony Melody this summer. He was such a good yet under sung character actor. His performance in Yanks was excellent and the mischievous smile he cracked when he said there would be 'no danger' of the bottle of whisky remaining unopened was brilliant as oppose to his wife's refusal to eat the cake that Geres character had prepared.I wonder if the picture of his character he showed Gere when he was talking about his war service was actually his real father as he had served in the Guards during the first world war - just a thought.Lisa Eichorn had me fooled for many a year - that Lancashire accent is spot on.

Colin Welland hacked this script from the B-plots of a thousand war pictures, in the process forgetting to write a story. This is the part of the war movie not quite as well done as the real show, the part you sit through only so you can watch tanks blow up. Here we get two and a half hours of that level of mediocrity. A Redgrave can do a lot without good dialog or interesting situations, but not everybody has such chops. This director, for instance, never rose above the level of his screenplays: if he had Waldo Salt or William Goldman at the typewriter, he was fine. YANKS has faults endemic to John Schlesinger's latter work - primarily it seems to be suffering a head cold. Not as spectacularly awful as DAY OF THE LOCUST, it is nearly as dumb. Now it's slapstick silliness, now it's brutal gravity, now it's just dull. If the individual scenes often work, a general Hallmark cloy drizzles over all. Richard Gere is at his prettiest. The acting is all pretty good, some of it better than that. And it looks very handsome, mostly shot through filters for a sheen of period nostalgia. But I find the movie not very watchable as document or elegy, and not at all as entertainment.The production is grimed with dissatisfaction, which certainly works thematically; it's about the "chin-up" attitude that replaces happiness in wartime. (If we believe Loach, Hodges and every postwar British director who never worked for Cubby Broccoli, not to mention T.S. Eliot, resignation is a British attitude not exclusive to wartime.) But theme and style are separate issues, and they do not compliment each other here. There's an almost interesting interplay between war-weary Brits and callow Yanks; almost, because nothing's investigated in any depth. None of the love stories is convincing. This is the major problem. So the movie is, unintentionally I suspect, rather hopeless. That's fine, but you can't fly on intention. Regardless of subject matter, competence is always a virtue.