Recon

As a veteran I can honestly say that I have never seen a group of more undisciplined soldiers in my life.. They're in enemy territory, and they are screaming at each other, fist fighting, and comducting themselves like they were at a HS foot ball game.

It's a wonder any of then made it out alive!

It was hard to watch. I wasted $7.99 on Direct TV to watch this violation of military norms

What this movie suffers from is a lack of originality and lack of creativity. It very much took from the horror movie style of dragging out a scene and making the viewer think a jump scare is coming only to reward it like once in the entire film with a meaningful moment. The majority of the film creates a bunch of build up and somewhat artificial tension to try and make the audience feel the hopelessness and turmoil of the soldiers. But frankly, they just didn't go through enough in the film to justify their stress and internal mutiny.

The film was clearly trying to showcase the impact of war on these boys but didn't think how to make the audience really care about the characters going through it in the film. Hard to blame the actors because they had to keep raising the stakes with the somewhat mediocre material they were working with and everything just felt very forced. A lot of the typical ingredients of fear, hopelessness and internal fighting amongst the soldiers were present but again, forced. The main lead keeps getting flashbacks and reliving the trauma of seeing dead civilians amidst assignment. The whole thing is incredibly forced and overacted to a point that just takes you out of it. I'm sure it's just what he was directed to do but the whole thing is too much and really sums up the film unflatteringly. Seriously, the main character spends half the movie with his face in a scrunched, enraged and/or tearful manic episode and it just doesn't really work well for the guy who's gonna be taking up the most screen time. It's war, it's horrible and traumatizing, and we need those "moments" but we don't need to see the main character wearing it on his sleeve the entire movie. Imagine Tom Hanks singular crying moment in Saving Private Ryan but for pretty much half or more of the entire movie. Not gonna have the same impact is it? Somebody should've told this director.

If you're into the genre I think this is worth a watch because there are a couple of sequences where the suspense is drawn out engagingly and it's a great example of a pretty low budget, simple concept style film.

I wouldn't call this a terrible movie, it's just definitely not a good one and only worth your time when you're looking for something you haven't seen in the war film genre. If you enjoyed the more subdued pace of the classic Band Of Brothers, there might be a couple of gem moments in this film for you. But they're few, far between, and add up to nothing much.

It's Italy in WW2. Four American soldiers witness their Sergeant killing a seemingly innocent civilian. The group encounters an old man pulling a cart who tells them about a group of nearby German soldiers. As they head off to recon their enemy, they fight among themselves and grow suspicious of the old man. It's a small war indie and it remains a small war indie. The characters feel small. The actors are small. The production is small. It's all very small.

This was simply a long and boring story about pretty much nothing, with terrible directing and ridiculous faded dizzying flashbacks. The 95 minute runtime felt like 3 hours. There were so many plot and technical issues, a Cub Scout would have better evasive measures knowledge when someone is shooting at you. This film needed to be a short - no more than 30-40 mins, to make any impact. What little impact it had, was absorbed by the boredom and highly predictable story-line. The score was too much for this film, but thankfully not as overbearing and out of place than most B-grade films. Acting was decent, especially from Viking's Alexander Ludwig. The cinematography and colors were very impressive, and the only redeeming qualities of this film. It's a generous 4/10 from me.

Supposedly based somewhat on true events, Recon is a basic, low budget take about 4 soldiers who having just completed a mentally scarring mission are promptly sent back out to perform recon and report on enemy movements among the snow - capped Italian mountains during World War 2. The overarching theme is of soldiers already struggling with the consequences and psychological toll of previous actions, being thrust into another compromising situation. The movie is Robert Port's (an Oscar winning short filmmaker) feature debut and he is clearly less invested in military minutiae and more interested in seeing where these characters go from the film's harrowing opening scene, which unfortunately is also better than anything that follows.

Port in my opinion, needed to spend a little more of the film's production budget on getting more accurate technical military advice. Because although the acting is of an acceptable standard, the reconnaissance soldiers we see depicted, just behave so incongruously, it's just too much of an ask, that we viewers are expected to believe in and sympathise with them.

I've only had limited military training and experience, but seriously. Soldiers behind enemy lines wandering haphazardly, shouting and arguing constantly amongst themselves, grouping together to make easy targets, not searching people they come across properly, especially considering the aforementioned opening scenes? Absolutely nothing rings true. I mean I literally wanted to reach through the screen and throttle Private Asch myself. He just never shut up and was seemingly oblivious to the fact that a noisy, careless soldier such as himself would likely attract enemy attention to either himself, or his fellow soldiers. Simply confounding all around!

Recon looks good, for a small scale production. It's just a pity that after a compelling opening stanza, bizarre narrative set - ups and script decisions make the finished film so ineffective in conveying its worthy themes concerning post traumatic stress disorders among front line military personnel.