The Vietnam war was in full swing when Richard Lester (A Hard Day’s Night, The Knack) made this trenchant black comedy in 1967 about the absurdity of war. Set in World War II, John Lennon and Roy Kinnear star as ill-fated enlisted men under the inept command of Lieutenant Earnest Goodbody (Crawford), an ill-educated military functionary who must lead his platoon behind enemy lines in the Sahara desert to build a cricket court for a prominent visitor. Lester studied famous battles in detail and uses actual newsreel material in lampooning the conventions of the war-movie genre. How I Won the War is a flawed work but with virtues that outweigh its ambitious reach and a prescience that allows it to speak to our times.