Surprised at how contemporary this film feels.

When I first saw it back when I was of school age about ten years ago I was drawn to the broad historical canvas, the character studies and the vintage firearms of the period (all of which I still think is fascinating). I'm a military engineer now, so I should have known I'd start seeing it through a more nuanced perspective. I just finishing watching the film again and spent the entire afternoon hitting the rewind button on the control because so much of the dialogue (the Captain's speech about the men not being made of metal but having to adapt constantly all the same and then Holman's flippant reaction was great), the characters or the situations felt like deja vu or that it was meant to relate to folks like me on a personal level. The interplay between Holman and the Captain was chrystal - I kept chuckling at that - engineers will until the end of times feel like they are sometimes misunderstood and perpetually underappreciated by leadership but at the same time relish the opportunity to operate under the radar (afterall, nobody cares who you are until something breaks and then you become the most important personnel in the universe all of a sudden - all just my opinion of course). The way the coolies made life possible for the sailors by taking care of all the dirty, demeaning chores reminded me of the army of hajis and TCN's back in the desert scrambling under supervision in the big bases in the region. Then the part where the escort party is pelted with garbage on their way back to the ship also reminded me of what happened once in south america where a few people started tossing lemons at our trucks because of some bad local rumors. Browsing through some of the topics I know a lot of the kids fell asleep through most of the film and I can understand that - it's just not for them. People that exercise a bit more patience and interest in unraveling the detais in the story are going to find it far more rewarding.