Catch-22

Director Mike Nichols and writer-actor Buck Henry followed their enormous hit The Graduate (1967) with this timely adaptation of Joseph Heller's satiric antiwar novel. Haunted by the death of a young gunner, all-too-sane Capt. Yossarian (Alan Arkin) wants out of the rest of his WW II bombing ...more

No film could do complete justice to Joseph Heller's acclaimed novel, which in the early 1960s provided a prescient shorthand for an era of official duplicity. But writer Buck Henry's adaptation is faithful to the book, and director Mike Nichols pulls no punches. This biting black comedy and military satire is comparable in some ways to Robert Altman's MASH, if not quite as funny. The story follows Heller's anarchic structure so closely that at times a viewer can get lost. The fine cast reads ...more