I really wanted to like this movie. From the buzz I'd heard, I thought this could be a great one. Sorry to say, it wasn't.
On the positive side, the battle scenes were extraordinarily well done. Granted, they were filmed in the grainy, slightly-speeded-up style of "Saving Private Ryan" or "Band of Brothers", but this is an effective style and what today's audiences have come to expect in depicting combat.
I've studied a lot of military history, extensively on WWI, and the film is technically accurate to a very fine degree. The Canadian uniforms are the correct colour, the Germans are accurately shown in a variety of clothing, the weapons are spot on. There are even things that I never thought I'd see in a movie, like accurate repros of German trench mortars. Somebody put a lot of time, effort, and money into getting these things right.
Which is great for the 20 minutes or so of the actual war movie scenes of this "war movie".
And the film "goes there" in ways that most war movies don't. The hero is suffering from neurasthenia, what we now call PTSD. The leading lady is addicted to morphine. These aspects of the story are realistic and commendable.
Sadly, the story sucks. Why do writers feel that war movies (like SPR) have to be written as family dramas? Real war doesn't work that way. All of the Mann's neighbours would have known they were German long before 1917 when their house gets trashed. In spite of getting a doctor's certificate, there's no way David Mann could have got through training and into the front line with his asthma. There's no way young men would attend a recruiting meeting if they had no intention of signing up. Absurdity piles upon absurdity.
The leading lady, Caroline Dhavernas, is lovely to look at, but why on earth am I looking at the leading lady for over an hour in a "war movie"? And she barely cracks a sweat going cold turkey from her addiction. Very pretty; not very real.
In a breakthrough for Canadian movies, the bad guy has an English accent, and he gets killed in the end. Just like American movies. Yay.
But the film finally lost me as Paul Gross did the Stations of the Cross through the mud of Flanders, wound in his side and everything. What on earth was he thinking as he wrote this? I dunno, but "All Quiet On The Western Front" made a much better job of capturing the pathos of war, and that was 78 years ago.
Colour me very, very disappointed.
On the positive side, the battle scenes were extraordinarily well done. Granted, they were filmed in the grainy, slightly-speeded-up style of "Saving Private Ryan" or "Band of Brothers", but this is an effective style and what today's audiences have come to expect in depicting combat.
I've studied a lot of military history, extensively on WWI, and the film is technically accurate to a very fine degree. The Canadian uniforms are the correct colour, the Germans are accurately shown in a variety of clothing, the weapons are spot on. There are even things that I never thought I'd see in a movie, like accurate repros of German trench mortars. Somebody put a lot of time, effort, and money into getting these things right.
Which is great for the 20 minutes or so of the actual war movie scenes of this "war movie".
And the film "goes there" in ways that most war movies don't. The hero is suffering from neurasthenia, what we now call PTSD. The leading lady is addicted to morphine. These aspects of the story are realistic and commendable.
Sadly, the story sucks. Why do writers feel that war movies (like SPR) have to be written as family dramas? Real war doesn't work that way. All of the Mann's neighbours would have known they were German long before 1917 when their house gets trashed. In spite of getting a doctor's certificate, there's no way David Mann could have got through training and into the front line with his asthma. There's no way young men would attend a recruiting meeting if they had no intention of signing up. Absurdity piles upon absurdity.
The leading lady, Caroline Dhavernas, is lovely to look at, but why on earth am I looking at the leading lady for over an hour in a "war movie"? And she barely cracks a sweat going cold turkey from her addiction. Very pretty; not very real.
In a breakthrough for Canadian movies, the bad guy has an English accent, and he gets killed in the end. Just like American movies. Yay.
But the film finally lost me as Paul Gross did the Stations of the Cross through the mud of Flanders, wound in his side and everything. What on earth was he thinking as he wrote this? I dunno, but "All Quiet On The Western Front" made a much better job of capturing the pathos of war, and that was 78 years ago.
Colour me very, very disappointed.