The Great War (2019)
This is the worst war movie I have seen this year.
After the trauma bath that was The Killing of a Sacred Deer, I needed to dive into something a little more uplifting…like a film about the Great War (or, for those keeping score, WWI).
This movie left me feeling like traveling back in time to take Archduke Ferdinand’s place.
Ok, ok…was it really that bad?
The movie tells the entirely fictional story of an African-American “Buffalo Soldier” platoon cut off behind enemy lines during the last three days of the war and of the white platoon sent to rescue them. Team White is led by Captain William Rivers (played by Bates Wilder). I’d never heard of Wilder but he appears to have been in classics such as Joy (2015) and Tater Tot and Patton (2017) (although I have no idea what Joy is it did star De Niro, so I guess there’s that). He also played Mitch in the Watertown, Massachusetts’ 2008 New Rep Theater production of A Street Car Named Desire…
Lest you feel I hate everything about this film, Wilder is actually good. I mean really solid. His performance was hands down the best of anyone in this movie. Everyone else could have been replaced by a cut out of Ed Wood.
Also on the upside, they appear to have hired a relatively good military consultant - or at least a good prop person. The costumes (although a whole lot cleaner than one would expect) and weapons were appropriate to the period, as were the military tactics displayed in the opening scene.
So that’s the good.
The bad would take me longer to write than it took me to watch the movie, but a few nuggets:
First, the writer/director (Luke Schuetzle) seems to have had his heart in the right place, wanting to highlight the bravely of African-American soldier and the obstacles many faced. But his ham-handed handing of racial issues comes off as so contrived that even the actors look uncomfortable delivering and listening to the cliched and trigger-ready dialogue. And why make up a story when there were plenty of real life stories of heroism by African-American soldiers?
Speaking of heroism, the film’s battle sequences, aimed at evoking terror and pride, left me with a sense of déjà vu…lasting all of 5 seconds, at which point I realized that the opening was a weak thematic lift from the Saving Private Ryan beach scene, while the close was a near perfect (cough…cough…plagiarized) reproduction of the final scene of Glory. The film clumsily steals several sequences from both of those movies.
Finally…and I know this is minor to many…but if the army is tied down in trenches and dying in waves, just how is it that Team White can simply walk past the enemy lines and traipse across the countryside for three days? If that was the case, why didn’t the military say…”Hey guys, I’ve got an idea…let’s not run across this barbed wire no man’s land and just bypass it by walking fifty feet to the left?”
Still want to watch it? The Great War is available to Amazon Prime subscribers. You can catch it HERE.
One out of Five Self-Induced Bayonet Wounds.
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Looking for something like this…but done right? You may want to check out one of these.
