Fresh and Exciting

Awesome Movie

A Major Disappointment

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Spoiler Alert. This was a poor movie. The plot device of a mission being necessary to take out a super long range, German artillery piece (The "V3") sitting out in the open, in broad daylight, apparently totally immobile, and with the allies having 95% air supremacy in France at that time of the war, is absurd. Btw, Germany fielded such a cannon called "The Paris Gun" 25 years before in WWI. So, the concept was not new, secret or that dramatically effective - especially when compared to German rockets (V1) and missiles (V2) and jet fighter planes available at the time.Besides the WWI Paris gun idea (range about 75 mi.), this is also a take-off on the WWII-era rail guns the Germans used with some effect near Leningrad (more of a giant 600mm and 800mm siege mortars) and Sevastopol ('42), and at certain Belgian fortresses in 1940. They also had a giant gun named "Anzio Annie" that bombarded allied forces in Anzio, Italy region. All these guns had one thing in common: they were used while mounted on giant rail cars to allow them to withdraw into mountain-embedded rail tunnels when not firing, so as to be somewhat protected from allied air supremacy. (Though this wasn't a factor early in Russia since Germans had air control.) Such guns are marginally effective due to the need to be able to see where the shots were landing, unless, in case of Paris gun or Leningrad siege, the target area was general and broad. Even then, the amount of steel used in making these guns (250 ((or five Tiger tanks)), tons for Paris gun to deliver a relatively small shell, or 1,300 tons ((three U-boats)) for the massive rail siege mortars Karl, Dora), made a good argument for them being extravagant, grandiose and wasteful.It was never clear why this rag tag squad was chosen. I always really like Lundgren but he is about 57 in this movie (though his fitness level is amazing). He is even passable as an actor, though not as the co-star. Officers in French Foreign Legion, btw, wear dark Kepi (or on combat mission, a helmet), not white as do lower grade legionnaires.Rourke's depiction of a sloppy, long-haired, cowboy hat-wearing, toothpick chewing colonel in 1944 (or at any time in our history) is preposterous and it makes you wonder if he didn't just take charge of his character and, knowing movie desperate for any kind of name actor, said he was going to do this his way (just a guess). The Oddball comparison is not so good since Oddball was a low-grade Sgt, while Rourke plays a "colonel." Are we to believe that this at least battalion commander (or even regimental commander, if he's a full bird colonel) is traveling to division for briefings and what not, in full view of one and two-star generals looking like that? The squad itself is utterly forgettable. I have already forgotten them from 45 minutes ago.The best part of the movie, besides seeing that good old Dolph is looking good and challenging us older guys to stay in great shape, are the excellent depictions of a couple of pieces of German WWII gear: the Sdkfz 251 half track and the long-barrel variant 50mm Pz.IIIM. Both vehicles looked so good that they could have been real - and may have been.And, oh,... taking out the massive "V3" with one 50mm shot from wounded, amateur tank gunner Dolph is ridiculous. Nuff said. Oops... I forgot the idiotic decision to arm Dolph's character with... a 12 gauge riot gun (!!!) is, like Rourke, another feeble device to make this movie stand out somehow. Without two good vehicles and Dolph looking good, I'd have given this one star instead of two.

Like sands in an hourglass we have the sands of a desert, except there is no desert, or sand or glasses, except for glasses of water in this film, which is about Dolph Lundgren's continued cinematic dominization of the cinema industry Brazil-wide.Once again, lo, these many films of Dolph, he is a man, and other men die because of him. The big twist this time, however, is that everyone watching this film in the safe comfort of their cars or boats or houses or rooms in a house - and I mean everyone - will lose their remote at one point in the movie (00:57:34) Guaranteed. It's spooky. That's when I lost mine, and then I rewound it on the tape that i watched it on that totally exists cause I bought it, and BOOM, lost it again, almost as though it had never existed in the first place.So, Dolph Lundgren, he's an army guy in this one.1942/1915

Dolph and his crew of misfits are actually a good fit ... for war. It's one of those B-movies that have a war theme. It's not really a movie that has many mysteries about it. Dolph has to coach a crew of people who no one else wants and from that starting point you pretty much know where this is going.There is conflict within and everything else you could expect from a movie like this. It's decent overall if you like that kind of stuff. It's not Anti-War, it's more heroic than that. And the end suggests a couple of things, that you'll either like or hate. But your decision/mind will have been made up long before that

I think it's safe to say that Ryan Little has established himself firmly as the worst director of World War II films of the 21st century. One might think that even as bad as the second and third Saints and Soldiers films were, that he would somehow improve with time and experience, but he stubbornly refuses to do so.Here's the plot of the film: The Germans have designed a long-range gun that has the capability of shelling "Paris, or even London." The weather is still warm, and the film takes place in the mountains, and if Paris is a potential target, then that means the film takes place after the Liberation of Paris, so the gun must be in the southern half of the border region of France and Germany. If London is a potential target as well, then this gun would have a range of at least 400 miles. The War Pigs are ordered on a recon mission to determine whether the gun exists. The gun is out in the open, and the film shows a flight of American fighter planes in the area, which would have easily spotted the gun, so why the men are required to look for it is a mystery. In "The Guns of Navarone" (1961) the guns were at least hidden from view from the air.The stupidity begins with a squad of 101st Airborne Division troopers being led by Captain Jack Wosick (Luke Goss, sporting a goatee the whole movie) on a mission in a French or German forest. For those that don't know, a captain commands a company, which was 176 men in 1940s Airborne divisions. A squad (12 men) was commanded by a staff sergeant. This squad does indeed have a staff sergeant, as second-in-command, in the person of former UFC fighter (and champion?) Chuck Liddell, sporting his trademark horseshoe mustache, which wasn't in style until, I believe, the late 1960s, and would NEVER be allowed in the Army in any decade. Capt. Jack had misunderstood his orders and leads his squad into an ambush by six German soldiers with an MG-42. He kills the Germans, but not before they annihilate everyone in his squad except him. As a result, he is demoted, because in WWII orders were never misunderstood and officers never got a lot of men killed in a single firefight. Okay, except for the "demoted" part, that last sentence was entirely sarcastic. You need to understand that this particular group of 101st Airborne soldiers were all wearing regular infantry uniforms with M1941 jackets (or M1943; I can't tell the difference yet), instead of the distinctive uniforms that paratroopers wore to show off their elite status. Therefore, they were either not really airborne troops, or they were just not very good airborne troops. The film never mentions which.Ryan Little seems hellbent to prove to the world that he has no idea what U.S. Army uniforms were worn in the 1940s, or how people in general dressed or groomed themselves at all during that decade, or he just doesn't give a rat's rear-end. Case in point: Mickey Rourke as an Army colonel. That's a ridiculous premise from the get-go, but when he is sporting his ubiquitous long, uncombed hair hanging down past his jawline from underneath a beat-up white cowboy hat, along with what looks like a combination of pajamas and parts of an unbuttoned period Army jacket, one has to wonder if the film had any direction at all. Maybe it was a matter of Little being intimidated by finally directing a couple of former Hollywood A-List actors and he didn't want to ask Rourke to at least comb his hair. Anyway, Werner Klemperer's, Colonel Klink in "Hogan's Heroes" was a more convincing colonel than Mickey Rourke.As part of his demotion, 1st Lt. Jack and his goatee are assigned to command a group of five undisciplined soldiers, a smart-mouthed, constantly insubordinate sergeant, and a French captain (Dolph Lundgren), who obviously outranks the lieutenant and would never have been put under a lieutenant's command (the U.S. respects the rank of allied militaries, then and now).The three or four days of "training" that the men are put through in preparation for the mission is too stupid to detail.**SPOILER STARTS HERE** After training, the eight men commence their mission. Five of them capture a German tank and half-track and make quick work of the 20 or so SS soldiers that had been in possession of the vehicles (Dolph Lundgren was very impressive standing in the middle of the road picking off SS troops with a 12-gauge pump). Lt. Jack then finds them and reports that another SS patrol took prisoner the two guys that were with him. Subsequently, they infiltrate the German compound, rescue the prisoners, easily kill all of the two-dozen or so Germans, and against orders, destroy the gun (they were only supposed to see if it was there) with a perfectly aimed tank shell. No Americans died and Lt. Jack and his goatee then get their railroad tracks (captain's rank insignia) back from Col. Cowboy Hippie and his court martial is canceled. The end.