War is hell, but Robert Altman made it funny as hell. He was perhaps a little too old and mainstream to be fully part of the counterculture of the late 60s, but he certainly made up for lost time. He was in his mid-40s when he made M*A*S*H and when it was released, it was the hippest thing around – and still is in many ways. With a firmly anti-establishment script by Ring Lardner Jr (one of the gutsy, blacklisted Hollywood Ten), Altman's perfectly cast duo of doctors, Hawkeye and Trapper (Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould), are somewhere they really don't want to be and set about trying to make the army's senseless systems work for them.
The comedy here manages to be both breezy and black, with the Korean war clearly standing in for the then-current conflict in Vietnam; Hawkeye and Trapper spend most of their time tormenting their straight-laced tent-mate, Major Frank Burns (Robert Duvall), and his prissy head-nurse girlfriend, "Hot Lips" O'Houlihan (Sally Kellerman). We can see why they indulge in such childish shenanigans when their friends are facing a very real death and their job is spending hours upon hours patching up young battle-damaged soldiers. The darker their days, the funnier they are.