:
Brian Stirner,
Brian Stirner,
Davyd Harries,
more...
:
Stuart Cooper,
Stuart Cooper
see all cast/crew...
: Criterion
: Documentary, Drama, Foreign, Military, UK, War, WWII, Criterion Collection
: 84 min.
see additional details...
|
|
Generous doses of newsreel footage highlight this British wartime drama. Tom (Brian Stirner) is a typical 18-year-old Briton who goes into military service early in 1944. The film follows the protagonist through the rigors of training and the shock of his first battle. Tom is killed on D-Day--hence the film's title, an allusion to "Operation Overlord." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
|
| Why We Fight
by RJones3
April 26, 2007 - 6:50 PM PDT
|
|
| War, lest we forget, is nationalities and ideologies--egos in deadly conflict. In the sixty-odd years since the last good war, we have finally become dimly aware of the horror of this all too human fantasy. This movie at least has the virtue of not glamorizing the subject excessively. It begins with that consummate egotist, Adolf Hitler, in an airplane admiring the architecture below. It ends with the death on a Normandy beach of a British soldier whose primary distinction is that he is a nice young man. The technical virtuosity of the film lies in patching together, more or less seamlessly, footage from the Imperial War Museum and an unremarkable story line. There is a good deal of bitching about the war from the rankers, but the hero is fatalistic. When asked if he likes being a soldier, he answers that he was called up like the rest. Pressed on the matter, he explains that he must go where he is needed. This is admirable lack of bravado, but the difficulty he faces--and the difficulty of this dramatic essay--is that if war is not glamorized, as indeed it should not be, then it is no more than (as an American general once put it) a crock of crap. |
|
|
GreenCine Member Rating
(Average 6.82)
17 Votes
add to list 
|
|
|
Your cart
© 2006 All Media Guide, LLC. Portions of content provided by All Movie Guide®,
a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC.