MOVIEmeter
Top 5000
Up 1,657 this week

MASH (1970)

 -  Comedy | War | Drama  -  March 1970 (USA)
7.7
Your rating:
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 -/10 X  
Ratings: 7.7/10 from 40,398 users   Metascore: 79/100
Reviews: 199 user | 101 critic | 7 from Metacritic.com

The staff of a Korean War field hospital use humor and hijinks to keep their sanity in the face of the horror of war.

Director:

Writers:

(from the novel by), (screenplay)
Watch Trailer
0Check in
0Share...

User Lists

Related lists from IMDb users

a list of 2309 titles created 5 months ago
 
a list of 582 titles created 16 Jul 2011
 
a list of 10000 titles created 3 months ago
 
a list of 59 titles created 07 May 2011
 
a list of 233 titles created 4 months ago
 

Connect with IMDb


Share this Rating

Title: MASH (1970)

MASH (1970) on IMDb 7.7/10

Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below.

Take The Quiz!

Test your knowledge of MASH.
Won 1 Oscar. Another 19 wins & 19 nominations. See more awards »

Videos

Photos

Learn more

People who liked this also liked... 

M*A*S*H (1972–1983)
Comedy | Drama | War
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 8.3/10 X  

The staff of an army hospital in the Korean war find that laughter is the best way to deal with their situation.

Stars: Alan Alda, Loretta Swit, Jamie Farr
Comedy | Drama | War
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.2/10 X  

An unorthodox and irreverent DJ begins to shake up things when he is assigned to the US Armed Services Radio station in Vietnam.

Director: Barry Levinson
Stars: Robin Williams, Forest Whitaker, Tung Thanh Tran
Comedy | Drama | War
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.7/10 X  

Comedy-drama about life on a not particularly important ship of the US Navy during WW2.

Directors: John Ford, Mervyn LeRoy
Stars: Henry Fonda, James Cagney, William Powell
Comedy | Drama | War
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 8.5/10 X  

Dictator Adenoid Hynkel has a doppelganger, a poor but kind Jewish barber living in the slums, who one day is mistaken for Hynkel.

Director: Charles Chaplin
Stars: Charles Chaplin, Jack Oakie, Reginald Gardiner
Comedy | Drama | War
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.7/10 X  

An apprentice train dispatcher at a village station seeks his first sexual encounter and becomes despondent when he is unable to perform.

Director: Jirí Menzel
Stars: Václav Neckár, Josef Somr, Vlastimil Brodský
No Man's Land (2001)
Drama | War
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.9/10 X  

Bosnia and Herzegovina during 1993 at the time of the heaviest fighting between the two warring sides. Two soldiers from opposing sides in the conflict, Nino and Ciki, become trapped in no man's land, whilst a third soldier becomes a living booby trap.

Director: Danis Tanovic
Stars: Branko Djuric, Rene Bitorajac, Filip Sovagovic
Mediterraneo (1991)
Comedy | Drama | War
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.1/10 X  

Greek Sea, World War II. An Italian ship leaves a handful of soldiers in a little island; their mission is to spot enemy ships and to hold the island in case of attack. The village of the ... See full summary »

Director: Gabriele Salvatores
Stars: Diego Abatantuono, Claudio Bigagli, Giuseppe Cederna
Drama | War | Comedy
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 6.6/10 X  

A bad Polish actor is just trying to make a living when what should intrude but World War II in the form of an invasion. His wife has the habit of entertaining young Polish officers while ... See full summary »

Director: Alan Johnson
Stars: Ronny Graham, Estelle Reiner, Mel Brooks
Drama | Comedy | War
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 6.7/10 X  

Semi-autobiographical tale from the early life of director Franco Zeffirelli looks at the illegitimate son of an Italian businessman. The boy's mother has died, and he is raised by an ... See full summary »

Director: Franco Zeffirelli
Stars: Cher, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright
Underground (1995)
Comedy | Drama | War
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 8/10 X  

The story follows an underground weapons manufacturer in Belgrade during WWII and evolves into fairly surreal situations. A black marketeer who smuggles the weapons to partisans doesn't ... See full summary »

Director: Emir Kusturica
Stars: Predrag Manojlovic, Lazar Ristovski, Mirjana Jokovic
Drama | War
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 8.4/10 X  

A pragmatic U.S. Marine observes the dehumanizing effects the Vietnam War has on his fellow Marine recruits from their brutal boot camp training to the bloody street fighting set in 1968 in Hue, Vietnam.

Director: Stanley Kubrick
Stars: Matthew Modine, Adam Baldwin, Vincent D'Onofrio
Drama | War
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 8.6/10 X  

During the U.S.-Viet Nam War, Captain Willard is sent on a dangerous mission into Cambodia to assassinate a renegade colonel who has set himself up as a god among a local tribe.

Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Stars: Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall
Edit

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
...
...
...
...
...
Roger Bowen ...
...
...
Sgt. Major Vollmer
...
...
...
...
'Me Lai' Marston
Indus Arthur ...
Lt. Leslie
Ken Prymus ...
PFC. Seidman
...
Sgt. Gorman
Edit

Storyline

The personnel at the 4077 MASH unit deal with the horrors of the Korean War and the stresses faced in surgery by whatever means. The tone at the MASH is established by recent arrivals, surgeons Captains 'Hawkeye' Pierce, 'Duke' Forrest, and 'Trapper' John McIntyre - the latter who Hawkeye knows he's met somewhere, but Trapper who won't divulge where - whose antics can be best described as non-regulation, and in the negative words of one of their fellow MASH-ers: unmilitary. The unit's commanding officer, Colonel Henry Blake, doesn't care about this behavior as long as it doesn't affect him, and as long as they do their job and do it well, which they do. Their behavior does extremely bother fellow surgeon, Major Frank Burns, and recently arrived head nurse, Major Margaret Houlihan, who obtains the nickname 'Hot Lips' based on information they glean about her through underhanded means. Beyond their battles with Frank and Hot Lips, Hawkeye, Duke and/or Trapper help unit dentist Painless ... Written by Huggo

Plot Summary | Plot Synopsis

Taglines:

M*A*S*H Hysteria See more »

Genres:

Comedy | War | Drama

Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for sexual content | See all certifications »

Parents Guide:

 »
Edit

Details

Country:

Language:

| |

Release Date:

March 1970 (USA)  »

Also Known As:

M.A.S.H.  »

Box Office

Budget:

$3,500,000 (estimated)

Gross:

$81,600,000 (USA)
 »

Company Credits

Show detailed on  »

Technical Specs

Runtime:

| (PG)

Sound Mix:

(Westrex Recording System)

Color:

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1
See  »
Edit

Did You Know?

Trivia

Austin Pendleton turned down the part of Radar. See more »

Goofs

During the talk in the office about having a football game, a light, presumably from one of the cameras, can be seen reflected in one of the men's sunglasses. See more »

Quotes

[first lines]
Lt. Col. Henry Braymore Blake: Radar.
Cpl. Walter 'Radar' O'Reilly: Yes, sir. I'll get ahold of Major Burns...
Lt. Col. Henry Braymore Blake: I want you to get a hold of Major Burns...
Cpl. Walter 'Radar' O'Reilly: ...Tell him to hold a couple day surgeons over into the night shift.
Lt. Col. Henry Braymore Blake: Tell him we're going to have hold a couple of surgeons over from the day shift out of the night shift.
Cpl. Walter 'Radar' O'Reilly: I'll put in a call to General Hammond in Seoul...
Lt. Col. Henry Braymore Blake: Get General Hammond down there in Seoul, tell him to send us those new surgeons right away.
Cpl. Walter 'Radar' O'Reilly: ...I hope he sends us those two new surgeons. We're sure gonna need'em.
[Leaves]
[...]
See more »

Crazy Credits

Robert Altman cast so many unknowns in the movie that after one or two known actors, the cast credits all say "Introducing" See more »


Soundtracks

"Taps"
(1862) (uncredited)
Music by Daniel Butterfield
Played on the violin
See more »

Frequently Asked Questions

See more (Spoiler Alert!) »

User Reviews

 
Anti-war? Gimme a break!
9 August 2009 | by (United States) – See all my reviews

I thought Altman's "Nashville" was brilliant. "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" was a solidly "different" western. MASH, on the other hand, manages to bore and rankle at the same time.

What's right with MASH: ingenious innovations in technique, like a loudspeaker within the movie helping to announce the final credits and a comic eating scene shot to resemble the layout of Da Vinci's "Last Supper." Clever! Yawn. (These bits neither advance the plot, contribute to characterization or ambiance, or do anything except exist. Some viewers will laugh at the moment of recognition, but playful directing doesn't make a good film all by itself.) Another possible innovation is the use of a Simon&Garfunkly theme ("Suicide is Painless") that has no bearing on the movie or much else in the world. If Altman thought this bit up all by himself, it's clever. Yawn.

The cast does the best they can with so little of interest to work with.

I didn't find MASH funny, for reasons that many others have mentioned. Its worst sin against humor, to my mind, is that the "fun" here is based entirely on a the antics of a few angry and arrogant narcissists. I'd have called them "psychos," but that would make them sound too interesting. The fact that they're also brilliant surgeons doesn't outweigh their mental-health issues, unless you get a lump in the throat just watching SOB's save lives.

"All Quiet on the Western Front" is anti-war. "Paths of Glory" is anti-war. You don't need to be told that because they show war itself as cruel and dehumanizing, right up on the big screen.

"MASH" is not antiwar, and would be pretty poor even it were, because most of the dehumanizing is done by the protagonists themselves. It was *marketed* as antiwar (something quite different) because being antiwar *sold* in 1970. The posters that showed a peace sign morphing into a leggy babe had nothing to do with the movie except to convince people that it was "anti-war" and therefore great, sexy, hilarious, and more than worth the price of admission. In fact, MASH is none of these things.

Hawkeye, Trapper John, and their buddies are not against war or even *the* war. They do and say nothing about any war. All they do and say is whatever they feel like, tormenting female nurses, outsmarting superior officers, taking their petty vengeance and unmotivated peevishness out on everyone around them. Sound funny? Wrong. The Marx Bros. might have been able to pull it off, but not this crew.

MASH is anti-authority, but that's a whole lot different from being anti-war. MASH is also anti-military, but in a motiveless way (unless raking in the bucks was a motive). All the army ever did to these distinguished surgeons was to replace, temporarily of course, their zillion-dollar a year civilian careers with the opportunity to play golf, football, and crude practical jokes while occasionally saving of patients whom they obviously do not give a **** about personally.

The primary "anti-war" message here is that surgical operations involve lots of blood squirting around. That's it. Why not say MASH was is "anti-surgery" or "anti-medical profession" movie? Because that would nail the picture for the fraud it really is.

(Note: I know that medical students can be krazy kut-ups, especially when it comes to spare cadavers. MASH is a lot less funny.)


9 of 13 people found this review helpful.  Was this review helpful to you?

Message Boards

Recent Posts
THIS IS WHY I HATE ROBERT ALTMAN natalie_hardy-997-307193
Absolutely disgusting. ringoringo6
Hot Lips change dvician
One of the most overrated vaseo1
My MASH remake - THE CAST fabtrick
Ho-Jon Sexually Abused by Frank OtterBoone
Discuss MASH (1970) on the IMDb message boards »

Contribute to This Page

Create a character page for:
?