Ashby’s unobtrusive, leisurely directorial style gives the story plenty of breathing space, allowing it to build gradually towards a tense, emotionally potent, and hauntingly ambiguous climax. Note: I do not have a Facebook account, so I cannot reply to any comments made about this list. For some, I'm not sure if I have the best battle of the film listed, so I put 'probably' afterwards. The couple’s explicit sex scene seems radical even today, focusing unflinchingly as it does on both the challenges faced by Luke as a wheelchair user, and Sally’s first orgasm. There is a limit of one battle/combat scene per movie and no science-fiction or fantasy is allowed.

It serves as a pleasingly unconventional visual metaphor for the sudden disruptive effect the pair will have on one another. He careers straight into Sally (Fonda) and sends his catheter bag flying, which bursts all over her pristine outfit. Yet while the film’s vehement anti-war sentiment is hammered home with the occasional overwrought monologue and some heavy-handed use of 60s pop staples, there’s also a great deal to admire here.Īshby’s riff on the ‘meet cute’ convention is as sly and subversive as anything in his earlier black comedy Harold and Maude (1971): a gurney-bound Luke (Voight) hurtles down a hospital corridor, ranting about mistreatment by ward staff. It’s all too easy to sneer at Hal Ashby’s melodramatic, sometimes earnest tale of a woman (Jane Fonda, whose controversial activism had made her a right-wing hate figure during the war) torn between loyalty to her conservative military captain husband (Bruce Dern) and her growing affection for a paraplegic Vietnam veteran (Jon Voight).

The best tank battle movies