Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
One of the world's most acclaimed comedies, M*A*S*H focuses on three Korean War Army surgeons brilliantly brought to life by Donald Sutherland, Tom Skerritt and Elliott Gould. Though highly skilled and deeply dedicated, they adopt a hilarious, lunatic lifestyle as an antidote to the tragedies of their Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, and in the process infuriate Army bureaucrats. Robert Duvall, Gary Burghoff and Sally Kellerman co-star as a sanctimonious Major, an other-worldly Corporal, and a self-righteous yet lusty nurse.
M*A*S*H is a genuinely singular film — Altman's overlapping dialogue, anarchic ensemble energy, and refusal of conventional narrative structure made it unlike anything Hollywood had produced. The acting is exceptional, with Sutherland, Gould, and Duvall all delivering memorably distinct performances in Altman's freewheeling style. Cinematography is competent and naturalistic but not especially distinguished. The plot is deliberately episodic and loose, which serves the anti-war thesis but leaves it structurally uneven. The ending is notably weak — the film simply stops rather than resolving, which feels less like bold ambiguity and more like an absence of conclusion.