Saints and Soldiers

I really really really did not like this movie. I mean I love WWII movies and shows (Band of Brothers was excellent) but I had a hard time getting in to this one, and then it just seemed like it ended. The movie went along just fine I think until the end. It's seemed the main character got shot, and his God hating comrade takes his scriptures. I'm assuming he reads them, but he could have taken them to give them back to his folks. Another thing is our guilt ridden Mo character (I say Mo for Mormon and am Mo and do not mean any offense by it). He never seems to really reconcile with himself, which if this were the only loose end might be OK, but they dumped all this stuff out in the movie, and it seemed almost like they didn't have the money to wrap it up so they just stopped.

Not an awful movie, but this one is somewhat dull and predictable. The characters are straight out of central casting - the farm boy, the guy from Brooklyn, etc. A great deal of the picture involves trekking through the forest while loudly chatting - probably not the best of survival skills during wartime. There are no surprises in this movie- when the sarge gets wistful and talks of the beauty of the French countryside, you know that he will be shot ASAP; and of course Deacon upon his death will see the civilians he accidentally killed (The six people you don't WANT to meet in Heaven.) A bigger problem with this movie is that it is over-rated because it seems to be very popular with the LDS community who have skewed both the ratings here and at NetFlix. I'm sure that the Scientologists all thought that "Battlefield Earth" was greatest picture ever made also. Those of us who can separate our religion from our entertainment may find this film a disappointment.

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.

It seemed the majority of the apparently small budget was spent in the first five minutes and that was nothing special. From there prepare for a slow meaningless meander in the hills or what we see of them anyway. The writing is really bad and the acting is not much better. I am shocked that this is rated a 7, that is laughable. It is shot in the style that reminds one of a cheaply made soap opera and that gives the film an unreal cloying tone throughout. I had watched "El Alamein" right before this POS and found it much better. In fact I can't remember seeing much of a worse war movie than "Saints and Soldiers" I doubt most people would sit through this rubbish even as made for TV movie.

I know that you shouldn't go into a movie with high expectations, but I did. Fortunately , I feel that my money wasn't wasted, nor my time. In fact I came out feeling like I should have paid more. First of all, it was an awesome war movie, plenty of action, not too much blood, great story, acting, and plot. Religion really wasn't too intertwined with the movie, but it was Deacon's values that helps them survive, not a movie where religion is preached. I believe that "Signs" was more of a religious story than this was, as well as "The Count of Monty Cristo" It is probably just because of how people are prejudice against Mormons. I had a great time and anyone who looks past the fact that it was made by Mormons (which is sad that it must be overlooked by some people) and enjoys the movie, will discover it is awesome and worth seeing again and again.

In my own opinion, this is a triumph for war movies. It's just as intense as any war movie, but doesn't contain all the blood and guts our society today gives us. It has enough to convince the audience that it's all real and then brings you into the atmosphere by the fantastic acting. (Kudos to all actors involved) This is also a low-budget film, which helps you appreciate it even more because there are no signs of that small budget. This is just as intense as pretty much any war movie you will ever see, but you don't have to worry about it being too violent or bloody. It's just as compelling because it puts you inside the eyes of the soldiers themselves. I hope that all who have access to see this movie take advantage of it because this is a side of cinema that isn't seen often.

As a British viewer I would categorise this film as OK but not great. My main problem with it the way that the British airman was portrayed. The character is portrayed as a selfish, rude and not very nice person. Sure there are some Brits like this but in this film we are not told why. It would have been good to have had some background and character development on why this RAF plot behaved like this. Other problems with this film is the plot. I was disappointed it did not tell the story of the massacre of the unarmed US troops at Malmedy. Instead it concentrated on a behind enemy lines escape. The cinema-photography is good which is shot mainly in a snow covered forest. Acting is OK but again I found the medics character confusing. Why was he so nasty to the guy suffering from shell shock? If you are addicted to war films then see this, but it is not as good a Saving Private Ryan. If you are British this is in the mould of a Mel Gibson 'make the Britis look bad' type movie.

First of all: Kudos for making a big movie on a small budget. That's something to admire. But, - I found the film very, very boring. None of the characters managed to become more than cardboard figures representing some cliché archetypal movie character, if that. Two of the main characters were just about invisible, as badly drawn as they were. No doubt the true stories that the film is based on are extremely interesting and impressive on their own, but that never makes it into this movie. It all falls apart because of one-dimensional acting, shoddy directing and, well, bloodless plot. There are no hooks. I watched the whole thing with director/producer's commentary afterwards, and the banality of their thinking shocked me. More than once my girlfriend and I burst out laughing from the Hallmark card philosophy and the team's blindness to the film's obvious faults. Sorry - good try, but doesn't really cut it.

I watched 10 minutes into this movie, and then I fast forwarded the rest. Long, boring, clunky, episodic and badly acted. It even has a Brit soldier with a moustache and a silly stiff-upper lip worthy of Monty Python. The long 'men on the march' sequences reminded me of Saving Private Ryan, just in winter time and with a worse musical score. In the rest of the world we don't really need more movies about American soldiers in WW2. I could not or did not connect with any of these country lads or their journey. I don't recommend this movie even if you liked Saving Private Ryan, it also lacks any kind of exciting action or battle scenes that distinguished the latter.

I'll keep this "rewiev" simple. The plot about different people finding and helping each other is good enough, but it fails to deliver. I liked the beginning of the movie. It gave me hopes for a good story. But after the initial slaughter and the escape of a few gi's it declined. You feel that u have seen this a thousand times before, you always knew what would happened next. At least a surprise or 2 would be nice. (The part where the "missonary" capture a German soldier that shows out to be an old pupil from Berlin was just plain silly). Every time the soldiers where "bonding" it felt like a cliché, done a million times before. The actors are non-convincing. When the soldiers where talking it seldom felt natural, especially the British pilot was awful. It feels like they just want to get the scene done and go home. The scenes portraying bad weather where laughable. It sounded stormy, but the trees around never moved. And the snow was falling straight to ground, not being forced by the wind that was supposed to be there. This is one of the worst war-movies I have ever seen.