Man on a Mission Movies

I just saw MORITURI (1965) for the first time, starring Marlon Brando and Yul Brenner. Really well done flick, not the least due to the performances, and the music by Jerry Goldsmith. This is a "man on a mission" movie, where a man or men are put in a position to carry out a mission of some kind, at any cost. Usually this involves the military, during some World War or Cold War, and often involving espionage. In a lot of cases, the man on the mission is in mortal danger, sometimes from both sides of a conflict, and most of the time the man on the mission can only achieve his goal at the closest instant of death.

I love a good man-on-a-mission movie, which are basically extinct today. The adult audiences of the 1960s/1970s for whom the sub-genre emerged, had a clear understanding of the stories. They perceived, as veterans and children of War, that the man-on-a-mission story has a depth and width modern audiences cannot see. Past audiences grasped the undeniable forces which thrust ordinary people into extraordinary circumstances, as a responsibility and duty, and an oppression of their individuality. "The needs of the many..." sometimes outweigh the individual in a man-on-a-mission flick.

Modern audiences understand catalysts only when they are personal, which is why revenge is such a time-honored excuse for a mission of any type. The secret agent must break the Communist stronghold on a tiny nation not because democracy demands it, but because the secret agent's wife was raped and murdered by the General in charge.

A military personality can easily understand the "mission" as it pertains to the greater good, while the movie-going audience mostly expects catharsis. The deft handling of the two, in a man-on-a-mission scenario, is how some truly original movies got made.

For my money, some of the best examples of the man-on-a-mission are pure action movies based around specific time periods and the fields of Wars, such as FORCE 10 FROM NAVARONE (1978) and THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967). Espionage sweats out in such movies as OPERATION CROSSBOW (1965), THE CHAIRMAN (1969) and FIREFOX (1982).

DAY OF THE JACKAL (1973) introduces the concept of Terrorism and counter-Terrorism, while THE DOGS OF WAR (1981) displays the vicious cycle of mercenary involvements in Third World countries post-Vietnam.

Thematically, the man-on-a-mission relentlessly pursues his/their objective in other varied movies. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981) follows the set-up of the professional civilian impressed into service by U.S. Intelligence, centered around the pre-World War retrieval of a golden trump card from the nefarious Nazis. And THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962)twists the concept, as the faceless powers behind the politicians carve their ideograms and dogmas into the national consciousness.

Some odd admissions into man-on-a-mission movies are the "Disaster Movie". THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972) in particular relays the impossible course taken by survivors on an overturned ocean liner. The survivors are given little hope, but the one hope they have is to reach the bottom of the ship, which is on the surface of the water, in hopes of being saved.

Another variation is ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981), in which the man-on-a-mission takes on a nihilistic future society. SORCERER (1977) gives us the cumulative stories of men on the edge of civilization assigned a brutish suicide mission of transporting nitroglycerine through almost-impassable jungle, in military transport trucks.

Perhaps the most odd version of the man-on-a-mission would be BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA (1974), which begins as an incidental plot to obtain money by people with no hope, and ends with one man's appropriation of the mission (referred to in the title) as his only remaining goal in life. A kind of madness descends on the broken man whose only sympathetic listener is the rotting head of a corpse. But in a way this is the most obvious symbol of resistance to the imposition of the mission, and the last rebellion of the hopeless.


It's interesting to note that the man-on-a-mission movie hasn't been revisited much since the early 1980s. I'm sure there have been, and I'll probably remember them soon enough. But the sampling of movies above show the deterministic streak of popular culture of that time, the will to individualism. It wasn't necessary to fully explain the consequences of the mission, just that success was survival, and failure a certain death. This is almost an incidence of existing in a chaotic world, and modern audiences are less inclined to be "put upon" for a greater good. The hope of accomplishing a secret mission, a vital struggle unseen by the public and perhaps forgotten in time with the protagonist dead in some unmarked ditch, does not set well with an audience raised on the ideal of money and fame for the most incidental and insipid accomplishments (reality television anyone?)

So it doesn't surprise me that the man-on-a-mission movie holds no interest today. Such a movie requires a internal check, a question of accepting the greater good, a fearless examination of how far an individual will go to ultimately remain an individual, even while being ground into pieces by the gears of military politics or ill-fated timing. And beyond that, to confront the fear that even the most supreme act might be meaningless. Or again, immeasurably forgotten. Submerged beneath all good intent, and all greater good.