There's a real trepidation watching an American war film not set in Vietnam . It's not just the victors who write history but Hollywood as well , and Hollywood history goes along the lines of " Germans are cruel and stupid, the French are stupid and easily beaten and the British talk like royalty and wait for the Americans to turn up to save them " . Who can forget the offensive scene in FRIENDS where Elliot Gould's character tells the British wedding party that " If it wasn't for us you'd be speaking German " ? In truth Britain wouldn't have won the second world war if it wasn't for American intervention . But likewise if Britain had fallen to the Nazi jackboot before Pearl Hsrbor and Hitler had still declared war on Germany how would America be able to defeat Germany . Let's not forget either that the destruction of Nazi Germany was mainly down to the Soviet Union which isn't something you see in a Hollywood movie . So when an American TVM company makes a film featuring American soldiers fighting in World War One I feared history was going to be rewritten in a manner befitting The Ministry Of Truth from 1984
Thankfully this isn't how things panned out . TLB isn't a great war film but one thing it's not blatantly guilty of is stating that the American Expiditionary Force won the Great War single handed . Of course the film focuses on a very small microcosm of the 100 Days Offensive , more specifically the battle of the Argonne Forest where a battalion of AEF soldiers are cut off and surrounded by a larger German force in the dying weeks of the war
And this is the problem with the film . It's trying to show the bravery of the Americans while at the same time taking an anti-war stance . It's trying to have its cake and eat it at the same time which means we the audience aren't treated to anything new . There's also something poignant about getting killed in a war in a period where the outcome is certain . BAND OF BROTHERS made this point quite blatantly but here it's not very clear though it would have been to the real life combatants
The battle scenes themselves are shockingly graphic for a TVM production and are very bloody . One can't help thinking that despite the violent nature something is missing and that is wide shots . By this I mean director Russell Mulcahy frames the action too tightly , there's rarely ever more than three or four characters in frame and one can't help suspecting a lack of budget meant a very small cast of extras . The fight scenes never appear truly cinematic to say the ones in THE BLUE MAX . So in summary this is a war film that in the context of a TVM is relatively impressive but will never win anyone's vote for greatest war movie
Thankfully this isn't how things panned out . TLB isn't a great war film but one thing it's not blatantly guilty of is stating that the American Expiditionary Force won the Great War single handed . Of course the film focuses on a very small microcosm of the 100 Days Offensive , more specifically the battle of the Argonne Forest where a battalion of AEF soldiers are cut off and surrounded by a larger German force in the dying weeks of the war
And this is the problem with the film . It's trying to show the bravery of the Americans while at the same time taking an anti-war stance . It's trying to have its cake and eat it at the same time which means we the audience aren't treated to anything new . There's also something poignant about getting killed in a war in a period where the outcome is certain . BAND OF BROTHERS made this point quite blatantly but here it's not very clear though it would have been to the real life combatants
The battle scenes themselves are shockingly graphic for a TVM production and are very bloody . One can't help thinking that despite the violent nature something is missing and that is wide shots . By this I mean director Russell Mulcahy frames the action too tightly , there's rarely ever more than three or four characters in frame and one can't help suspecting a lack of budget meant a very small cast of extras . The fight scenes never appear truly cinematic to say the ones in THE BLUE MAX . So in summary this is a war film that in the context of a TVM is relatively impressive but will never win anyone's vote for greatest war movie