I rewatched this film recently, when it first came out I found it rather boring, but then again I was rather young and dumb and lacked the intellect of properly enjoying it. Fast forward to today, not going to pretend that my intellect is now vastly superior, however, I'm now capable of watching films through a more critical eye, and I still found this movie boring.
Blatant historical inaccuracies aside (no banzai? Come on...) this film misses all targets. It tries to be too many things at once: it tries to be a philosophical introspection on war, it tries to be a camaraderie story, it tries to depict the cruelty of war. It fails at every single one of these things.
The company men seem disconnected from each other, there's no sense of proper bonding between the troops. You don't actually see their struggle, you are only being told that it's there.
The action is not flowing, just some random events thrown in without any context. The philosophical introspection doesn't make any sense and it's sort of disconnected from the action. It seems the characters are reading from a piece of paper, the thoughts are not their own.
The characters are poorly written and you simply can't get attached to any one of them. They are as unidimensional as they can be. They don't transform, they're not a journey. They either die or survive. They just are, they don't become.
The 5 star distribution doesn't really do this film much service. They just threw in all these big names, but their potential is barely used. With maybe one or two exceptions, none of them stand out. With so many stars, none have an actual chance to shine.
There are far superior WW2 movies, or war movies in general, to watch out there. You may give this a miss without regret.
Blatant historical inaccuracies aside (no banzai? Come on...) this film misses all targets. It tries to be too many things at once: it tries to be a philosophical introspection on war, it tries to be a camaraderie story, it tries to depict the cruelty of war. It fails at every single one of these things.
The company men seem disconnected from each other, there's no sense of proper bonding between the troops. You don't actually see their struggle, you are only being told that it's there.
The action is not flowing, just some random events thrown in without any context. The philosophical introspection doesn't make any sense and it's sort of disconnected from the action. It seems the characters are reading from a piece of paper, the thoughts are not their own.
The characters are poorly written and you simply can't get attached to any one of them. They are as unidimensional as they can be. They don't transform, they're not a journey. They either die or survive. They just are, they don't become.
The 5 star distribution doesn't really do this film much service. They just threw in all these big names, but their potential is barely used. With maybe one or two exceptions, none of them stand out. With so many stars, none have an actual chance to shine.
There are far superior WW2 movies, or war movies in general, to watch out there. You may give this a miss without regret.