Ombre al confine

Had "Everything is Thunder" been made later and set in WWII, perhaps it would have worked better. As it is, the film suffers from believability many, many times...and the most egregious mistake is showing Germans betraying their country repeatedly...something which just wouldn't have happened during WWI...and would have still been pretty unlikely during WWII. Trust me on this...I used to teach World History.

When the story begins, you learn that a Canadian officer, Hugh McGrath (Douglass Montgomery), is in a German POW camp...and that he'd already tried to escape three times. The fourth time seems to be the charm, as he is able to escape...though he kills one of the guards in the process. This means, if captured, McGrath will almost certainly face the firing squad. It helps that McGrath speaks fluent German and that he finds the great cliche--a hooker with a heart of gold (Constance Bennett). Inexplicably, she befriends him, sells all her possessions and heads to the Dutch border with him! If this isn't hard enough to believe, wait until you get to the insane ending!!!

In the film, almost no one speaks with anything other than an American or Canadian accent. Of the leading characters, only Oskar Homolka has a Germanic accent and you never hear Montgomery speak a word of German! Add that to the folks betraying Germany right and left and you're left quite confused. Overall, the acting and romance is nice...though the romance also makes no sense nor do many folks' actions throughout the movie.