And Yes I Know Its a Brand Gun I Just Thought Soviet Was More Funny
No attempt to be a realistic war movie
I am watching Company of Heroes presently. The story is set in the Battle of the Bulge period. The force on the attack are Americans. Normally in a war one uses the weapons of your own side. The "sniper" hero is carrying a post-war FN-49 rifle. It was first issued to a military unit in 1949. Another soldier in the unit was carrying a British issue Number IV Mark 1 or Mark 2 SMLE infantry rifle.
Their historical sins were not limited to the American unit. It may sound trivial, but the babe spends half the movie in pants. That may sound trivial but the Feuhrer forbade women to wear pants. She wouldn't go into a Nazi base in tight fitting slacks.
Well, you may think that's all trivial but that's just immediately ended the suspension of disbelief for me. It only gets worse from there. The plot is equally ludicrous. Let's just say that by the time the whole mess had happened, we have managed to run into a Russian who speaks excellent English and a British bar brawler who both save the day in their own way.
So, is it a "stay away" movie? No. If you REALLY need something to soothe your craving for some violence or a 21st Century politically correct WW II movie, this will fit the bill quite well. But that's about all.
99 out of 117 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
Bad Company
Warning: Spoilers
This is a film that tries to market itself as Alasitar McLean meets Quintann Tarantino meets BAND OF BROTHERS . One worries though how the much hyped casting of Tom Sizemore may go down since it's sixteen years since he appeared in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and one envisages him being more likely cast as the American equivalent of a character from DADS ARMYrather than a veteran combat soldier still able to kill Nazis . Thankfully the the years have been physically kind to Sizemore and the early scenes of COMPANY OF HEROES are relatively impressive . You do believe the film has transported you to the cold , snow covered Ardennes of December 1944 and any fears that you're going to be watching something on a par to the laughable 1960s big budget version of THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE are unfounded . Don't speak so soon
Despite having some good cinematography and music there's little else to recommend . As soon as the Germans turn up in force you'll be surrounded by so many things wrong about COMPANY OF HEROES . One thing is type of tanks the Germans are using - they're certainly unlike any tank the Germans used but are also unlike any tank you've seen . It's also very obvious that the explosions are created via CGI on a par with the ones used in SyFy Channel productions . You'll also notice that the American weapons aren't American weapons from that period
You can overlook these errors and perhaps suspend disbelief that the Nazis were close to developing the Atomic bomb if there was a compelling storyline but the screenplay is incredibly clumsy and strewn with errors that don't make sense within the film's own internal logic .For example :
On watching the Americans escape on a train bound for Germany the chief Nazi villain states " So now the hunt moves to Stuttgart " . Wouldn't a better idea be to just stop the train and shoot the Americans ? Also fortunate for the story that the railway line is intact after all that allied bombing
A Soviet character introduces himself and says he was a POW of the Germans . The problem is he's several pounds overweight , not something Soviet prisoners of war suffered from at the hands of the Nazis . I kept thinking this guy was a plant put there by the Nazis but as it turns out he is a genuine Soviet POW
A character introduces himself as " 'Allo I'm Willoughby British airforce " . No Briton would ever describe themself in that way . It might be British royal airforce " or British RAF " but never British airforce
Two characters walk down a busy street in Stuttgart speaking English and no one over hears them
A character mentions the Nazis have developed an atomic bomb and yet no one asks the obvious question " What's an atomic bomb ? " I'm led to believe even the crew of Enola Gay hadn't heard of the term until they were on the flight to Hiroshima
A character mentions they must " flee with the atomic bomb before the allies bomb the factory tomorrow " Would an OSS agent be told of the bombing schedule of the allied airforces ? If the allies want to get their hands on the bomb why not wait to see if the mission is a success before bombing the factory ?
This had the potential to be if not a good wartime action adventure then certainly better than the mediocre mess that it ended up as
46 out of 57 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
They don't make war films like this anymore.
Well, yes, they do, apparently. In the old days war movies used to be full of inaccuracy's, have stupid plots, really stupid action sequences and the occasional love story. They were enjoyable for what they were - a piece of entertainment but without the seriousness to stop you enjoying s good old fashioned shoot-em-up war flick. Then came movies like Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down to spoil the lot. All this realism, slight adherence to facts and decent story lines really wrecked the genre. So thanks be to God there is still someone out there who doesn't give a f**k about all of that and can still make the same pile of do-do we got in the 1960's. Guns that can shoot endless rounds of ammo, bazooka's which can blow up tanks, tanks that look like nothing you are ever likely to find in any book about tanks, German's who can line up as if on parade to get shot, prisoners who are well fed, camps which look like building sites, etc. etc. etc. This is not the worst war movie I have ever seen but it was close. What the f**k Tom Sizemore and Jurgen Pronchnow were doing in it only their pay check knows. And, yes, there is a nude scene for no apparent reason. Like the rest of the movie you ask yourself WHY??????
70 out of 90 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
Pick a cliché, any cliché . . .
Warning: Spoilers
What a load of hooey.
First they're in the Ardennes. Then they're in Germany, at a secret weapons test center, no less.
Then, in full uniform, they decide to hop a train to Stuttgart, in the heart of the Third Reich! Implausible, far-fetched, and inane.
Of course the one girl is attractive, and taking a bath, with the door open, in a house full of soldiers. Will someone please call Kelly McGillis, and tell her the scene from 'Witness' has just been hi-jacked.
Worst yet, except for the Thompsons and one .45, none of the weapons carried by Americans were American. What, no Garrands had made it to the Bulge? I want my seventy-five cents back . . .
19 out of 20 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
stupid, ridiculous and unconvincing screenplay salted with
terrible acting of all the roles. those escaped pows looked like guys full of stomachs all the time. stupid sound track tried very hard to be sublime and patriotic. the lame dialog further deteriorated the performances of all actors. the fire-fighting scenes looked so staged. this is one of the worst wwii war movies i've ever seen. the whole movie fell so flat that you automatically disconnected yourself. got on a train to stuttgart before the nazi Germans, yet those Germans could have reached there so easily. the g.i.s, Russian and British pows all used sub-machine guns? and the ammunition they carried seemed to be never used up. then there's the opera singer, then the Russian could walked up to the guard and asked him to light the cigarette for him? my god, this movie is so awful and laughable!
29 out of 39 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
Not the worst WW2 movie in recent years
Warning: Spoilers
I can't call this movie a total waste of time, because I was reading my email while suffering through it. I had to quit watching halfway through. I could take no more.
Here's what to do if you know you are making a bad WW2 movie. Get actors that performed well in great WW2 productions, pay them whatever you have to in order to get them in your stinker, and hope they draw people in. Unfortunately, Tom Sizemore from "Saving Private Ryan" + Neal McDonough from "Band of Brothers" + Jürgen Prochnow from "Das Boot" + a bad movie, still = a bad movie.
This movie was obviously made by people that know nothing about the military, and didn't care enough to consult with people that do. I knew the movie was in trouble when people kept calling a sergeant "sir" throughout the whole movie. Even if a character was supposed to be ignorant of this, the sergeant would have corrected him. How many times have we heard lines in a movie like, "Don't call me sir. I work for a living."
You gotta love how worried they are about a "German" tank they encounter. They had to stop this tank before it overran their whole base, but they use their Bazooka rounds on the accompanying soldiers before FINALLY using it on the tank. This "Super Bazooka" is so powerful, that one shot at the tanks track blows the whole tank up in a huge fireball.
"The Guys" also have this capability to become things that usually take quite a bit of specialized training and time. Instant snipers. Instant spies.
OK. I realize getting the right equipment and weapons is difficult, if not impossible. Still, if you are going to disguise what is probably a Russian T-34 tank as a German tank - at least make it look like an actual German tank, like they did in "Kelly's Heroes". The makers of this movie were content with just hanging pieces of whatever all over these tanks so they looked like anything besides what they actually were.
The best equipment goof was the train engine seen in most of the close shots. A typical old steam locomotive usually seen in old westerns, and of the type used in the late 19th century, complete with "cow catcher", large stack and cab.
This movie doesn't seem to know what it is trying to be either. Is it trying to be an alternate history, like "Inglourious Basterds"? That would be the only way to explain the Nazis having anything close to nuclear weapons capabilities. Is it trying to be like a graphic novel, with all the blood squirting, body-squishing tank scenes? Is it a comic book, with it's main antagonist adorned with some weird metal leg brace, walking cane, and serious (bad) comic book persona.
The only thing that looks halfway decent is the uniforms. Some people have commented about wrong patches and insignia, but the overall look-and-feel seems right. OK. I've never heard of anyone in the RAF (Vinnie Jones character) wearing berets or calling themselves the British Air Force or anything other than RAF.
A terrible movie with so much wrong with it that all I can say is that it MIGHT be better than "Ardennes Fury". Watch it for free if you want a good laugh.
6 out of 6 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
LET'S GO TOWARD THE SOUND OF THUNDER
Warning: Spoilers
The film has unnecessary subscripts as to the locations, as the scene informs you where they are at. Also the opening gives you the basic plot. A group of men are trapped behind enemy lines post Battle of the Bulge and find a great weapon being developed by the Nazis. You could have figured all of this out by yourself- really.
What makes pseudo histories are the characters. This film concentrated on one particular character, sniper Nate Burrows (Chad Michael Collins) pretty much to the exclusion of everyone else. Vinnie Jones was a welcomed addition. Some of the scenes worked well, while others were simply bad, making this a very haphazard production. I loved the scene of the killing of the German soldiers done to the opera of "Faust." Shades of "Clockwork Orange." However, the CG graphics of the planes and gun fire flames was noticeably fake. What really hurt this film is that they squandered dialogue which should have been better utilized to build character rather than conceal it, as in the case of the main character.
Makes for a rental for Vinnie Jones fans. Vinnie knows bar fights.
Parental Guide: F-bomb. No sex. Brief "Witness" style nudity (Melia Kreiling who plays Bathsheba in "The Bible" mini series)
4 out of 4 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
Even Alcohol Can't Save This Movie
This is one of those movies that makes me wonder why people spend money on it when there are so many starving children in this world.
The acting is sub-par (on a good day), the script is something I would expect from someone in high school or lower, and the whole production is just painful.
I have seen horror movies with more credibility than this. Why anyone, would spend good money to watch this, let alone produce it, is beyond me.
You'd be better off watching Saw Part 26 then this piece of ill contrived drivel. It insult even one who had anything to do with the second world war, including those not born yet.
The best alternative ending, would have been to line up the production crew against a wall, and shoot them. It insults everyone's intelligence, and and anyone's taste. Please let this die a quite death in some film morgue that no one cares about.
In short, it should be shot in order to put us all out of our misery.
30 out of 39 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
Could have been much better with simple Director changes
On viewing this film I was excited by the cast. As a fan of both Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers seeing cast members from both made me giddy with anticipation on watching the film.
All in all the film story is quite good - I liked it. The acting is fine on most parts as you would expect from the cast - lets face it, several of the cast crew are more than qualified to fulfil their roles.
I cannot believe the annoyance allowed to be taken over by this film by the dull and out of place sound effects and music - music being my main gripe. What on earth was the sound production crew doing? If you watch any good war film dating back to the 40's the music is not the bug of any film, until I saw this. There was absolutely no need for the music over the scenes, it made the film feel cheap (OK it is low budget) where no music would had made it feel realistic. The sounds of tank movements, back ground noise, shots, explosions would have made this film feel 200 times better rather than the music. Why? The sound effects ruin the picture and atmosphere.
In general, the effects on video are OK. If there was a way to improve this picture just leave the voices in, delete pretty much all music and replace with sound effects. Score would then be an 8/10 (for a low budget film).
I am at a loss why the hell the director commissioned the music.
This could probably be sorted with someone with skill re-recording the sound. It takes away "the edge".
119 out of 152 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
Because one (1) was the lowest rating available
This could easily make the list of worst WW II movies ever made ... not 'the' worst (because there are so many bad ones already) but I doubt this could have gotten anymore historically inaccurate or filled with bad and out of period cliché's. Watch this if you are only in solitary confinement and have no other choice or if you are the kind of person fascinated by road kill (you know it's ugly but you look anyways). The whole thing reeks of low budget nonsense. Likely the only thing that would have been more entertaining would have been watching the footage from a hidden camera during the pitch meeting in which this stinker was discussed and ultimately bought into by a studio. The movie embodies everything about modern Hollywood that can and should be criticized.
7 out of 7 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
One of the worst war movies ever made
Surely one of the worst war movies ever made. Uses every cliche at its disposal, plus has one of the most contrived and unrealistic plots you'll ever see. Acting is equally woeful. Even the special effects are bad: e.g. they didn't even use computer graphics to generate WW2 tanks, they had to use non-WW2 tanks.
Avoid at all costs.
9 out of 12 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
Below Average
I like WW2 movies. It's not that I expected a lot from this one. Overall it let me down. I have enjoyed some of the main actors in other movies. The premise was solid. But the overall feel of the movie was it was trying too hard. This is a B movie at best. I watched the entire movie and was mildly entertained. Set your expectations low. It seems that any "new" war movie is either a blockbuster or a sub-par offering. My personal rating system is fairly simple. If I watch the movie in it's entirely it automatically gets a 5, because it did what it was supposed to do. It entertained me. Company of Heroes will go on my shelf and probably never be watched again. It must of been a straight to DVD release. http://thelemondreport.blogspot.ca/
14 out of 16 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
where's Capt. Dye when you need him?
With seasoned war film veterans this film really disappoints. Mainly because of the 1990's CGI effects and not being realistic.
They use several clichés; unlimited ammo, inaccurate spraying of bullets when they shoot they're machine pistols, guys falling BEFORE the shot hits, and they fall several meters when they get shot, the Russians and the Germans speaks perfectly good English.
I don't know how much Jürgen Prochnow got to play a part in this movie, judging by his acting, not enough...
The only good thing is that that you get to see Vinnie being Vinne and beats up several guys on his own, which would be expected.
A lot of not great acting in this movie..
51 out of 58 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
Good acting for the most part but highly historically inaccurate.
Warning: Spoilers
I am a WWII buff and have been for most of my 69 years. This movie was a big disappointment, despite the talented actors doing a pretty good job with the story and script they were trashing history with. In this day and age where writers are too lazy to even research and write accurate stories of events, it is a shame. Especially since we have so many new research tools at our fingertips compared with the fifties and sixties when more accurate WWII flicks were in their heyday. Of course, the forties were loaded with propaganda because we were either in the war or recently finished with it and trying to counter red propaganda.
The Germans were never even close to setting off an atom bomb. Certainly the allies were worried about that possibility and the Germans certainly were trying at various times during the war to develop the thing, but they blew their chances when they imprisoned, shot, or exiled the majority of their scientific talent in not only Germany but conquered eastern block nations. They just basically shot themselves in the foot when they stopped the Jews from participating. The A bomb program was so unorganized, fragmented, and doomed from the start, (Imagine this. Goring was actually put in charge near the beginning) that it never had a prayer of beating the allies. The movie infers that we not only stopped them by rescuing the brains of their efforts, but that it made some kind of difference as to whether we could accomplish the bomb ourselves without him. Hogwash and a terribly irresponsible revision of history by the story tellers. Other reviewers have pointed out the absurdness of ending up with an American, a Russian, and a Brit working together. The British worked with us on the bomb in the US and the Russians had several successful spies working on the Manhattan project feeding them nearly everything anyway.
A high ranking German officer wearing a horrific brace that is meant to be menacing I suppose. How likely is it that he would have spikes protruding on the inside where they could catch on the inside of his other leg and eventually cripple him completely. What a comic book idea that one was. What are the odds of him being everywhere they went, even beating the train to Stuttgart ahead of them. Neat too that he happened to be at the Opera for the same performance our hero had to attend. They managed do this all this as a fighting group instead of a lone infiltrating spy which is the only way to pull that off. They even did it without speaking German, other that a few WWII movie cliché quotes.... That tank crushing that soldiers head and body made me choke on my popcorn though. I guess you can file that one under sensationalism.
20 out of 26 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
The film raises a fundamental question
There are countless extraordinary stories from the war years. And many stories intertwine with other stories. A person involved in creating films would have thousands upon thousands of fantastic, harrowing stories to choose from. I've read many and I just read for entertainment. A true historian could lead one to thousands. Why can't Hollywood take advantage of technology and reproduce some of them accurately? They could make very entertaining, exciting movies. They would never run out of scripts. Truth is stranger, more unpredictable, much more fascinating than any fictitious tale, specially during the incredibly events of that time. The stories lie in the individual experiences. Not so much in the epic, major campaign, major battle subject manner. In this movie, the language/slang of the time, scenario, combat events, characters, equipment, geography, are all inaccurate. It serves as a display of how ignorant Hollywood is of history that is really hardly history at all being that the war ended just 20 years before I was born.
29 out of 37 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
Glaring Inaccuracies make the movie impossible to watch
From incorrect uniforms to incorrect weapons to incorrect armored vehicles to 4 engine bombers making a bombing run from what appeared to be about 300 feet this movie was constantly throwing so much comic book fiction stuff in your face it was impossible to follow the plot.
It also felt like a video game as a large squad of about 8 guys kill off hundreds of German troops. It was almost as bad as showing the little pac man life icons and then subtracting them in scene after scene as yet again the character implausibly survives to kill dozens more.
Too bad this movie could have been so much better just by someone paying attention.
Rating 3 stars
36 out of 48 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
Filled With Surprises.
Warning: Spoilers
The viewer will be surprised to learn that Hitler not only had an "atomic bomb" in the works during the last days of World War II but that it was all set to go. A squad of American infantrymen, plus a behemoth of an Englishman, steal the scientist behind the device and kidnap him and his lovely daughter. There used to be an errant Russian soldier attached to the small group but he turned out to be a Commie and made off with the actual plans for the bomb, thereby making it necessary for the rest of the Allies to steal the guy who WROTE the plans. And that is the just-so story of how the West and the USSR got the bomb.
Some of our guys are peeled off during this cross-country pursuit, true, but not before slaughtering a dozen Nazi soldiers amid fountains of spraying blood. Some of the deaths are in slow motion in case you might want to applaud. One of our guys can deck two or three of the enemy in any of the brutal fist fights too. I'll tell you this -- there's blood all over the place.
The story? It's as if you put "The Dirty Dozen," "The Guns of Navaron," and "Saving Private Ryan" into a veggie blender and dumped the contents into an inexpensive bowl, a convincingly photographed bowl.
If there's a cliché missing, I missed it. The GI with a haunted past. The dying leader: "Don't worry about me, just save yourselves." The beautiful doll that accounts for the brief nudity -- all too brief. The sniper with his scope, the coda at the grave site in France, the ballooning explosions, the plain old jeep turned into a fireball, the smilingly evil Nazi colonel with the leg brace and the menacing walking stick, the grabass in the ranks.
There is some marked historical anomalies. The Brit and the American practically high-five each other when parting, for instance. But NOT among the anomalies are the photography and the make ups. Both are simply fine. It's hard to judge the quality of the performances because of the abundance of action scenes and stereotypes.
4 out of 5 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
Really?
It's got Vinnie 'the thug' Jones in it. Avoid at all costs unless you're a mindless idiot that likes footballers as actors. Apparently my earlier review was too short. Chelsea thug Jones fails to capture the acting genre with his usual pathetic input.
3 out of 3 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
Henry and Greta discuss Company of Heroes
Warning: Spoilers
"So what did you like about the movie?," Greta asked before popping a handful popcorn into her mouth.
"That it shot to pieces a lot of Germans, err. make that Nazis," Henry said, looking away from Greta.
"So shooting a lot of Germans is entertaining?," she sniffed.
"I mean Nazis. Because they were bad dudes those Nazis. SS and all."
"How you know they were Nazis? I mean what was that bad head dude wearing actually? Let's have a look at his picture: he is wearing what looks like a Luftwaffe peaked cap, a Wehrmacht collar and is in command of what might be SS troops taken from the eagle sign on their arms. What does that make him, an SS luftmacht or Wehrwaffe officer?"
"They are Nazis. Who cares!," Henry cut her short.
"I hope you found it entertaining," Greta smiled peacefully.
"It is entertaining! A group of GI's gets separated from the others during the early stages of the Battle of the Bulge and travel deep into Germany to Stuttgart, all the while chased by mean SS stooges, where they prevent the bad Germans from using a super bomb. How more entertaining can it get!?"
"Helped by the stray Englishman and Russian.. oh wait.. make that a Pole, not a Russian."
"Yes, those are in there too!"
"Like it the real war. There were some others in that one too," Greta added deviously.
"Exact," Henry nodded enthusiastically.
"So what is it like? Saving Private Ryan? Inglorious Bastards? Kelly's Heroes?"
"Ehhh.. well they act serious like in Saving Private Ryan but the plot is a bit like Inglorious Bastards but without the actors, a developed plot and interesting dialog. And the Germans are as Germans are in most movies, except I liked that Hans Landa chap who played that bad German officer in Inglorious Bastards. There isn't someone like him in this one, but there is a lot of shooting, which is kind of fun."
"A lot of shooting..," Greta chewed on those words.
"I did find it a bit strange our boys were not wearing overcoats in the winter. And they never seem to reload. And they did most of their shooting standing up. And it's funny they can talk English all the time without being spotted by the Germans around them. And the Germans didn't quit look like that.. except for the helmet perhaps. Although they had them probably whitewashed in the winter. And they did not have those high boots and those darkish gray uniforms. And they seldom lined up for a firefight."
"Did you find the lousy German laughable as well?," Greta queried.
"I wouldn't know, I don't know any German," Henry shook his head.
"I bet you don't. Living on that big island away from the rest of the world makes you a bit myopic doesn't it? I bet you don't even know where Stuttgart is. I mean Stuttgart in Germany, not Stuttgart in Arkansas."
"Why should it matter where Stuttgart is?"
"You are right.. it doesn't. Although it might have been as it says it's based on real events. I wished that one day someone will make a movie with real American people and not those fake one's you see in these movies who are just as fake and cardboard as their adversaries, so that the rest of the world might at least feel that we all belong to the same species and homo sapiens is not split into homo unitedstatus and homo shootemupus."
"But this isn't a movie like that. It's just mindless fun."
"Yes, it is mindless fun, but it is also an expression of a culture and in turn it intensifies that same culture. It partly explains why some American soldiers still think they can Gung Ho into another country shooting up everything without regard because they see themselves as a company of heroes and the others as targets unless they wear skirts and have boobs: then those others are exotic love interests."
"Geez, ease up, it's just a movie."
"Yes.It's just a movie. A sad dime in a dozen movie. I wished we had seen the last of them."
Henry walked out in a sour mood to get a beer at a downtown bar. He did not care which one. And Greta slid in a blue-ray into the DVD player. The sounds of Zither wafted into the room and she sat back to enjoy the Third Man.. one of her favorite postwar movies.
10 out of 16 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
One of the worst movies I have seen
Warning: Spoilers
I was hoping to see a good war movie this weekend. Boy was I sorely disappointed! Using the wrong weapons, Using Russian Heavy tanks and calling them German Tiger tanks, To the Germans developing the Atomic Bomb, which we all know, they were not even close to developing it. In the Special features, the Director mentions that he built the 88mm antiaircraft out of wood and PVC pipe. I can tell you that it looks it! The Director should be ashamed of this movie, as should anyone who had any thing to do with it. Having a small budget is no excuse for producing trash. So many other quality movies have been made with smaller budgets this is just a waste of resources and good actors. Do not let the names of the Actors fool you. Bad directing will elicit poor performances from even the best actors. This movie should be passed by.
5 out of 5 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
I made it to the 34-minute mark, but no farther.
Warning: Spoilers
I suspect there are actually reviews being posted here that are paid for by the studios. That is the only reason I can think of for anyone to laud this particularly putrid film.
This film is terrible on many levels. The music is detracting. The camera shots wobble on some characters in a scene, but not on others, to no obvious cinematic benefit - it's just annoying. The dialog is lame. The characters are unsympathetic. The CGI effects are unconvincing.
But for me, what absolutely killed any desire to continue watching this film were the repeated, blatant violations of historical accuracy that kept coming like a runaway freight train. These included (but are by no means limited to):
1) The actual initial German assault of the Battle of the Bulge took place during a very harsh winter, often during driving snowstorms, and during a period of time when Allied aircraft were grounded by weather. The location for the film, however, was obviously experiencing a thaw, complete with running melt water and sunny skies enabling Luftwaffe fighters to make sorties.
2) Tom Sizemore and Neal McDonough both playing lieutenants, even though they are both far past the average age of a WWII lieutenant.
3) The tanks, gads, the tanks! Really, really bad attempts to pull off convincing German AFVs. In fact, with one exception of a cameo appearance by what appeared to be a Soviet-era SU-85 or SU-100, the tanks don't resemble any tanks ever used by anyone anywhere.
4) In one battle scene, the camera keeps coming back to a close-up of the barrel of a Vickers water-cooled MG. I keep looking for the Allied soldiers manning it, but there aren't any. Apparently it's supposed to be a German MG.
5) The soldiers are cut off behind enemy lines in blizzard-bound Belgium, then suddenly they are deep inside Germany??
6) The Germans have conducted an a-bomb test. Right.
7) The GIs, on the lam in Germany, run into a Soviet soldier, also running loose deep inside Germany, who speaks flawless English. Sure.
And, being unable to take any more, that's about where I turned it off. I understand the need to suspend some belief in order to enjoy a movie, but this one was asking for more than a suspension of belief - it was an all-out assault on the sensibilities of any knowledgeable person who enjoys the war film genre, coupled with amateurish film-making. And that, my friends, is how films like this earn miserable one-star ratings.
4 out of 4 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
Watch this film if you're into bad scripts and stupidity.
This has got to be the worst WWII film ever. The Germans never started building an atomic bomb during the war. It was never contemplated. It was never started. Besides that, it was just corny. Someone mentioned it was funny. It wasn't funny. It wasn't meant to be funny. 'Top Secret' was a funny WWII film. It was written that way. This was just bad script writing done by someone who knew nothing about WWII except, maybe there was a Battle of the Bulge in 1944. I couldn't even finish watching this. I didn't care how it ended. I just wish an atomic bomb had blown up the writer and everyone who had anything to do with this movie.
7 out of 8 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
"Let's go and start a fight, boys!"
Warning: Spoilers
Based on a video game series is all you need to know about this movie. Unfortunately, that message comes during the closing credits after you've watched the whole thing. Of the seventy three World War II films I've watched and reviewed on IMDb up to this point, this one comes in second to dead last. The only one worse is a West German war flick with the American title "Desert Commandos". Taking place during the closing chapter of the war with the Battle of the Bulge as a backdrop, an American military unit gets lost behind enemy lines and stumbles upon a plot by the Nazis to develop an atomic bomb. There's a line in "Inglourious Basterds" that goes "We will be cruel to the Germans." There's also a scene that takes place in an opera house. This movie has both of those features as well, but without Tarantino to guide the action. You can afford to take a pass on this one.
4 out of 6 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
Not Worth It.
Warning: Spoilers
It's a long step downward from "Band of Brothers" to this ill thought-out imitation, but I suppose that successes like "Band of Brothers" and "Saving Private Ryan" can't be ignored. There's gold left in that vein.
I didn't watch it all the way through. My dolorimeter reading was bouncing around in the red.
But it's worth a brief summary. "Band of Brothers" followed a unit -- Easy Company of the 101st Airborn -- from jump school to the end of the war. The goal was simple: To do one's job and stay alive if possible. "Saving Private Ryan" gave us a more tangible goal: Save Private Ryan. The goal here is to save the world from extermination by Hitler's atomic bomb. Now THERE is a goal!
All of that is too dull for "Company of Heroes." There's a nude scene, Germans who speak English -- including Jurgen Prochnow, the talented and handsome young KaEl of "Das Boot," whose features now seem to be a cartouche set in a frame of creases and who is evidently in need of another paycheck -- tanks that don't look like any tank ever built, slow motion deaths, a sniper who never misses, and -- well, why go on? The photographic techniques are copied from "Band of Brothers," as is the title.
4 out of 6 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
Nice try, but unreal looking war film
The producers of "Company of Heroes" tried to make a World War II film. They get credit for the effort. But the finished product makes one wonder how serious an effort they made. Or maybe, one should question the ability of modern filmmaking to proximate historical things with any semblance of reality.
The plot for this movie comes from a video game. That's OK – fiction is fiction. The one thing it has is a big serving of action. I watched the bonus video on making of the movie. Some of the production people and cast described the lengths they went to for authentic props. For instance, they got a Russian tank that closely resembled a German Tiger tank. They duplicated it in several shots to give the impression of a column of tanks. They made one wooden model German anti-aircraft gun and moved it from place to place to represent many such guns.
But the anti-aircraft gun looked shiny and freshly painted. It didn't look like a weapon that had been in combat for three or four years. Wherever we saw anti-aircraft guns, it was the same shiny, brand-new looking phony prop. And the tanks all looked the same. They didn't smudge the tank or change its appearance from scene to scene. So, it was obviously the same one. The aircraft used were all computer generated, and aerial CGI never looks real to me – or to other viewers I know.
As I said, the film did have lots of action. But that was so unreal from two standpoints. Most of the GIs were using Tommy guns. None appeared to have cylinder magazines, so they would have had 20-round or 30-round box magazines. We see several of the GIs firing the submachine guns repeatedly. They had to be peeling off scores of rounds. But never do we see anyone changing an empty magazine. Indeed, they never seem to run out of bullets. The only time we see men carrying rifles – which most of the enlisted men in an infantry unit would have, is in the early part of the film, with the snipers.
The movie had the "feel" of a video game throughout. Not only did the GIs have unlimited bullets in all their Tommy guns, but they mowed down the Germans by the dozens. In scenes with several Germans firing on them, we only occasionally see one of the Americans being hit, while they take out scores of Germans. Finally, even the filming outdoors in Bulgaria with the snow on the ground didn't look real. Maybe because digital video is so sanitized, it doesn't look real.
This movie took place around the time of the Battle of the Bulge – in late 1944. When they learn about the Germans working on an atomic bomb, the GIs don't question it at all. They remark as though they knew what an atomic bomb was – even though it hadn't been invented yet. Some scientists and a very few top government officials knew about the efforts to make an atomic bomb, and what it was. But very few people had such knowledge before the U.S. dropped the A-bombs on Japan in August, 1945.
There isn't much more than can be said about this film. It left me feeling as though I had just watched someone play a war video game.
5 out of 8 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
burmeisteroura1948.blogspot.com
Source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2555426/reviews
0 Response to "And Yes I Know Its a Brand Gun I Just Thought Soviet Was More Funny"
Postar um comentário