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Reviews
Saints and Soldiers (2003)
Quite possibly the cheesiest war movie ever made.
About a week ago i watched a trailer for the war movie, Brotherhood and i liked what i saw.After renting the title, and thoroughly enjoying it i returned it to the store and whilst there saw an equally promising trailer running for Saints and Soldiers. Me and a friend of mine instantly rented the title and afterwards we felt our money was wasted. Firstly, as far as authenticity is concerned, it is flawed and these flaws are listed on the IMDb page. Secondly, in the first 10 minutes of the film i had nailed every character in the movie. The over questioning medic, the gung ho yokel(I just wanna shoot me some krauts), the honourable sergeant, the crazy religious marksman with a mental condition and last but not least, the stiff upper lipped British pilot which as a Brit extremely offends me. Most RAF pilots were local boys ranking as low as flight sergeant, not the pompous mustachioed lord types. The tongue in cheek conversational exchanges between the pilot and the yokel almost made me switch the film off, 'dammit i just need a cigarette'.Awful. The accompanying banjo music whenever he was on screen made me want to tear out my hair. The lack of combat in the film is a major weak point and in the few instances in which there is a war on, the scenes are literally unbelievable, for example the American infantryman firing a bazooka at German soldiers (video game style) when there is a perfectly good perimeter set up with machine guns overlooking the field. Grenades seem so over used, is this a James Bond movie? It was obvious that Sarge was going to die, maybe he would be more fitting in Starship Troopers, i dunno. A film of this calibre would have been accepted as 'good' back in the 1950s but come on, this is 2005! The film obviously had a decent budget, it could have done a lot better with the resources it had, people want to see realism. You can badmouth special effects all you like but that is what the people want.The whole story was fit for post midnight television. Seriously, if you want a good laugh, rent this movie, its funnier that Sergeant Bilko, but if you want a seriously good example of winter conflict just watch Band of Brothers, or to give you a low budget example, When Trumpets Fade.