Operation Dumbo Drop

Weirdly enough, the story behind this ultrahigh-concept picture is true: In 1968, U.S. soldiers in Vietnam carried out what sounds like a calculated PR stunt, delivering an elephant to a friendly village via parachute drop. This bizarre tale might have made for a memorable black satire (elephants, after all, weren't the only heavy payloads that Uncle Sam was dropping on Vietnamese villages in '68), but it's played strictly for middlebrow yuks and rote male bonding. Still, an exceptionally sturdy cast -- especially Danny Glover as a stern but sensitive captain and Denis Leary as a wisecracking supply sergeant -- manages to keep the one-joke scenario airborne most of...