Battle Ground

I don't remember the last time I watched a movie as bad as this. The action sequences are poor. There was no bond between the audience and the actors. I didn't much care which ones lived and which ones died. From the beginning to the end, the accents were terrible (especially the Irish accent - although I knew there was something off with the others too). I should have read the IMDb info before watching this movie and then I would have figured out that it was an Aussie movie with no Irish or English actors in this production. Anyway, Im not going to waste any more time on this movie. Its 1hr 40mins of my life that I wont ever get back again. A total waste of time. I was Bored to death.

Was expecting a cheap action movie and got an emotional drama/thriller, but it works. Turns out it is more about the lives of a few soldiers and how they and their families deal with the war and how it changes them as people. There's still a lot of action and excitement, but it's mostly about three soldiers trapped together and how they work to survive. It also deals with the character's wives back home and how they adjusted to life without their spouses. It jumps between all these characters and can be a bit jarring at first, but at the end all the stories tie together in a way you probably won't expect. There's an emotional ending that will definitely affect you and makes this a worthwhile watch. Not what I expected, but very good anyway. Would give 4.5/5 if I could.

Not perfect, but it's more accurate to what WW1 would have been compared to all of these Americanized "real" war movies, except for one part when the Private is running and is never hit...until he is blown up in the trench. I felt explosions and bullets were real, and I didn't see anyone getting their leg blown off and saying "It's a flesh wound!" Real war is being hit with one bullet, not like these other movies that have multiple bullet wounds and they walk away. The story of the wife, I felt could have been left out, even though it added irony and drama to the typical war theme, but I wanted it to be a war movie only. Also, there could have been more battle scenes perhaps. Dialogue was okay, although it seemed a tack calm for war, truth be told. There were a few cheesy lines.

Every war movie cliché lives on in this waste of money and time. They're all here -- the strong but self-questioning hero, the cowardly kid soldier who finds courage only to (surprise!) get killed, the weedy English officer, the cruel German one...Hammy acting, leaden dialogue and uninspired effects. As if that weren't enough, the script is full of anachronisms, as the characters talk and behave in ways that are utterly foreign to the world of 1916, but will be perfectly familiar to modern viewers. And the icing on the cake: plagiarism. Major scenes in this stinker shamelessly rip off Timothy Findley's 1977 novel The Wars, and the film made of it. (That movie wasn't great, but it's a damn sight better than this one.) So how bad is it, really? Bad enough that you'll wish you spent the time doing practically anything else than subjecting yourself to this loser.

An Australian attempt to create an image of the terrible battles that were held in WWI. They managed to show that on a small scale. Military units in dirty miserable conditions, sitting in mud and other dirt waiting until they were driven into a certain death. The whistling of bullets and explosions of bombs. The fear in the eyes of young soldiers who probably didn't even know what this war was about. The image I'll remind of this movie was that of the arrogant superior who, without hesitation, gives an order to attack, although this would lead to needless bloodsheding. Because this was totally unnecessary and pointless in this stage of the battle, since they were planning for a heavy bombardment on the German positions. It was a showcase of egocentric display of power. I don't understand how come those hundred men in the trenches don't jump on that fagot coward collectively and chased him on the battlefield with a gun. Anyway, the introduction of this film is the rush towards the German position, realising that no one will reach the other side alive. Don't expect grand heroic scenes like in "Saving Private Ryan", but rather limited images and close-ups. A clear sign that this is a low-budget film. The three soldiers Sergeant Major Wilkins , private O'Leary and Corporal Jennings , survive the massacre and end up in no man's land between the two lines. The rest of the battalion is spread over the mud-filled grounds. From here on starts the biggest part of the movie, because going back to their own trenches takes time. Corporal Jennings is very badly injured (A full leg torn away) which makes that the withdrawal is not so evident. This section is therefore extremely boring. It's not because of the acting. The acting is still acceptable despite the circumstances . But to be honest, a slowly receding threesome is not much to work with and to get an exciting story. Eventually they made up a parallel story in which the wife of Sergeant Major Wilkins plays a leading role. She's pregnant and wants an abortion. Something that wasn't obvious to do at that time. Eventually she asks the help of a nurse who doesn't have experience with this operation. Obviously this ends up in a complete tragedy. And what a coincidence ! This nurse is the fiancée of Corporal Jennings, who at the same time ceased to live on the battlefield. "Forbidden Ground" mostly succeeded in visualizing the atmosphere and the horror in WWI, now 100 years ago. In terms of content, it's a disaster and the story itself is a bit far fetched.

Few films in comparison to the number of those examining other armed human conflicts have provided a look at the hopeless blood soaked, mud clogged trenches of the First World War and fewer still have lent voice to the courage, will and love for their fellow soldiers of the men who followed without question orders which amounted to voluntary mass suicide in a hell scorched land far from the blessed sight of their most beloved. Johan Earl and Adrian Powers have in 'Forbidden Ground' crafted the viewer such a window into one of the darkest periods of the 20th century. Their film movingly throws us into the trenches of the British Army and its portrayal of the raging machine of war as it grounds young terrified men into its only product - something much different than they were before, alive or dead. The film seizes the senses and raises tension from scene to scene. The plot forwards the stories of two British married couples; the men at war while the women walk trancelike, waiting through the motions of a special hell of their own for word that their spouses still live. The two story lines unfold against the backdrop of their individual struggles for survival and preservation of sanity which tragically become more difficult when their lives intersect. Surrounding them all is the War and distance, time and pain of absence. Sergeant Major Arthur Wilkins played by Johan Earl and Corporal Richard Jennings played by Martin Copping are men hardened and desensitized as they are ruined and broken by their years in the maw of combat. Both are fair, natural leaders who care for the men they command, but they've lost their identities, they've forgotten what their lives were like before the War began. Indeed, the surreal daily ballet of carnage their lives have become leaves them with weakening connection to the women they married and eventually sees them becoming brothers in arms trapped in a situation neither will ever completely escape. Grace Wilkins, wife of Arthur played by Denai Gracie and Eve Rose, fiancé or wife of Corporal Jennings are the ones their men left behind. Nightmares of Arthur's rejection of her upon his return plague Grace, and for aid with the condition she faces which could hurt her husband more even than the terrors of war, she feverishly seeks aid and finds its only source in Eve. Eve has suffered her man's absence as much as Grace, and in so genuinely needing to aid her causes irrevocable harm. The film is a war movie, and it is also a tragic drama which explores the consequences of meetings between average people who find themselves already connected in ways they never could have imagined. The historical accuracy of the period is spot on as are the booming, ground churning scenes of battle of which there are several. For the budget available, the film makers did a great job although the continuity and viewer perception of the size of outdoor spaces sometimes feel askew and not to scale. 'Forbidden Ground' is a gritty, visceral war film wrapped around a touching story driven by characters with many shades of depth. Their reactions and solutions to the horrible situations they find themselves in is compelling and this viewer found himself only wishing they could get through it all and have the opportunity to heal, together - reunited at last. I highly recommend 'Forbidden Ground' to the fan of war films as World War I remains a blemish on history mostly glossed over by popular fiction. The period equipment, weapons and dress on the battlefield and off are well reproduced, and the actors who portray the interesting characters inhabiting this study of the chilling effects of war on its victims - war makes all of us its victims - are worthy of the viewers time and praise. For most every other mature moviegoer the film is also a worthwhile watch: the tragically intersecting fates of these characters will reach you on some level. 8/10

Forbidden Ground is an Australian-made rendition of the plight of British soldiers trapped in no-man's land, and should have been the war epic it was (once) anticipated to be. The unfortunate truth is that it falls short of all expectations, and as a patriotic Australian I take no pleasure in saying it. From the first moments the small budget is apparent. Close-ups try and disguise the limited scale of the production. The battles in the film are all no more than small skirmishes and never really produced with any flair, impact, or suspense. The constant reliance on CGI for special effects cripples the action, unlike it's predecessor Beneath Hill 60 - which it will surely be compared to - which used mostly practical visual effects and captures gritty violence effectively. As such, when the horror of trench warfare comes along in this film, it is woefully un- engaging, and downright boring in parts. I felt no connection with the men going to their deaths. The obvious computer-generated explosions and squibs left a lot to be desired and had no "punch." It's an anti-war film, as most WWI films are, so you would expect a focus on correctly portraying the shocking waste of war, but Forbidden Ground lacks the budget or know-how to do it properly. There are some tired clichés including snobby, arrogant officers and the hard-nosed NCO, and while historically accurate in some ways, Forbidden Ground doesn't cast the roles with conviction, simply recycling scenes and minor characters from a dozen better war films. The other problem with authenticity is that most of the cast is Australian, and while our accents may be more or less similar and we often are mistaken for Poms, the actors on show here can't quite make it sound natural and every line feels laborious and forced. If they'd just spoken with their normal accents they would probably have sounded more comfortable with their characters, but alas every Pommy soldier on screen sounds like a caricature of British stereotypes. Another problem with authenticity is that the unit that is focused on seems to be an amalgamation of British accents. Whether intentional or by accident, units were formed from specific locales (universities, rugby clubs, towns, cities, etc) and would only occasionally be mixed with troops from broadly different locations (casualty replacements). So the end result is a disappointing straight-to-DVD war drama without any magnetism or flair. I praise the cast and crew for doing what they could to commemorate the war, but I can't recommend Forbidden Ground as good viewing. Better luck next time.

I'm seriously so impressed with the production. There were a lot of explosives and the actors actually performed their own stunts. It's not a huge budget movie but they had done so well for what they had with the limited money and time. The story itself is very heartbreaking. My favorite part of the movie was the prison scene when the character of Wilkins strangling Eve Rose, knowing that Eve was his man's wife who died in his arms during the war and also Eve was the reason why his own wife was dead when he came home. I couldn't breathe while watching the expression on his face and my tears wouldn't stop running. I could feel his pain. It's so heartache and contradictory in the same time. Well done over all!

I just love it, when at the end of the movie Arthur is kneeled down on his wife's tomb, weeps and almost cries, promises his wife to "always love her", and places red roses on her grave... sporting a $ 20 gold-and-steel quartz watch!!! All of this in 1916??? Other than that, sorry to see again a heartless, stone-faced, stereotyped Grrman officer, whose only task is to kill and to see how the mama-loved Irish soldier is used as a sacrificial lamb to make a boring movie. Yawn!

A poignant film. Beautifully told, and I thought Denai (actress) was superb. I absolutely loved the womens storyline. As a girl, War films are not something I generally race out to see. But this film was recommended to me, and I was not disappointed. This is a war story with a difference, instead of focusing on the scale of war which has been done to death, Forbidden Ground tells the story from ground level. They create an awesome claustrophobic feeling, which is always how I envisaged soldiers on the front line would have felt. Having to keep your head down all the time!! The film captured the very essence of not only the tragedies on the battlefield, but the tragedies at home too. Utterly memorable.