User reviews

Bad acting for the most part with a weak plot. Michael Madsen and Billy Baldwin's performance is severely lacking. These actors (and I use that term loosely for this movie) need to hang it up, if you see their names in a movie, it's going to be one to avoid. The best acting came from the nurse, who has a minor part and Eric Roberts is underutilized; mainly just clicking a camera every few seconds.

Some of the gear and uniforms were okay, while others are really poor quality; you can see better at a reenactment. It's apparent that there was no technical advisor and the Germans are for the most part laughable.

I am an avid war film watcher. The acting in this film is one of the worst I have seen. Helmets that don't fit and over their eyes, shooting from the most ridiculous positions you can imagine, and a pillbox that apparently can fire bullets that come back and it the wall below from slot they are firing from /facepalm

Then there is 5 soldiers that take out a farmhouse without being noticed by the obs point in an upstairs window, despite crossing a 300m open field!

As someone else mentioned German soldiers standing in open spaces in the line of fire waiting to get shot my goodness...

don't waste your time folks.

Saw this movie listed with a couple of actors I like thought it might be a fun movie to watch. This was an insult to my father and my uncles who fought in the second world war. Me and my dad used to watch all the old gung ho, American movies From World War II and some of those were really cheesy and we loved them but this is an insult for the intelligence to people firing rifles with the bolts not even moving machine guns bullet belts aren't even moving while firing a nurse with really bad German accent. I would never recommend this movie to anyone. It is a total waste of time. There are so many better movies out there to watch than this one, particularly on the subject of World War II.

I like war movies, not because I am a military person (on contrary, I don't like period when I served in army). This should be "Band of brothers" kind of movie, no? Not by a light year.

I can forgive bad script and unrealistic dialogs. I can forgive amateur-like camera, and music like someone is turning on some classical music radio station on and off. What really bothers me is very bad acting and the fact that actors look like nobody ever saw any army nor any arms in their entire life. Their moves during the battles, kids that play Counter Strike know much better. Germans stand upright in opened space and shoot? Who does it, really? Right na ded soldiers stay behind the tree and shoot from the left side of it??? And so on, and so on. I had no stomach for this. This movie is such a waste of time and energy. Not sure about talent, didn't see much of it there.

If you like war dramas, skip this one. Better watch Band Of Brothers, or "Saving..." or... simply choose any random decent war movie.

After managing to not gag (with some effort) at the cliche'd lines being uttered during the innitial brief of the mission near start of the film, i could watch no more due to the annoying cameraman following the platoon clicking his camera shutter loud enough to drown out the lines being uttered by the overly talkative patrol moving thru the woods, presumably expecting to be attacked at any time from their stances, but never in a million years expecting to be ambushed behind enemy lines from their incescant talking.

Since i could'nt watch it further in disgust at known actors putting their name to an asylum movie as much as the annoyance at the film itself i probably shouldnt have wrote a review, but thought i may as well in hope people who like to make their own minds up about how bad a movie is like me may think twice about actually bothering if i described how far i got into the movie before gave up and wished i had taken notice of the reviews mysel in this preticular case ;P.

How to do a better job on this production?

First, hire a military consultant. That would get by the majority of the issues.

Next, hiring an acting coach. Not a really expensive one. Maybe a director from the Little Theater of east New Jersey.

Taking these two steps would great enhance the production value of this movie.

Then the next step would be to follow just a little of the historical facts associated with this battle.

This film is almost a disservice to the memory of the heroes that fought in this battle.

Dialogue is awful, could could have used a little polishing.

If nothing else I learned to never watch a film directed by this guy.

The very first scene was a dead giveaway that I was in for a crapfest. We have a lieutenant general from one division and a brigadier general from a different division, who's supposed to be the real-life Dutch Cota, but looks like he's going to keel over and die at any moment. These generals, a corps commander and an assistant division commander, without any staff anywhere to be seen, are giving a mission briefing to two lieutenants - platoon commanders. Admittedly, if these generals have nothing better to do while running a war, it's probably more efficient to cut out four levels of the chain of command and brief the lieutenants directly. These two platoon commanders are told that if they don't take Hill 400, the Allies will lose the war. General Cota mentions that he watched from Omaha Beach as the lieutenants, or one of them, scaled the cliff at Pointe-du-Hoc. This is pretty amazing, because I've been to both Omaha Beach and Pointe-du-Hoc twice, and not only are they blocked from view from each other by terrain, they are too far apart to see human beings even if they weren't blocked.

The lieutenants take their platoon out, which clearly hasn't been trained in small unit tactics, along with an embedded (a term that wasn't used in the 1940s) octogenarian photographer who is constantly taking photos of nothing, yet never uses up the film in his camera, because he never puts in a new roll.

Honestly, after the lame briefing by the generals I stopped paying much attention to the movie. I worked on my Duolingo lessons and occasionally looked up to see what implausibility was happening. I'm not even sure if I watched it until the end.

It just gets exhausting listing all the problems with these terrible independent films, one right after another. I don't know how these filmmakers make money performing these abortions.

Best thing the producers did was use Eastern Costume for the wardrobe or this film would have a 2/10 rating. I would expect better from an Asylum movie by now. Just grabbing a couple veteran actors is not enough to overcome bland script and poor special effects. Set locations were also very bad along with camera work. Cinematography is almost non existent save for one scene opener showing the hills with some very dense low fog. As far as the "battle sequences", not in any way plausible. So much for the crack German troops that were mentioned by the general with his helmet on in the HQ. Only other + was shooting on Red Digital. Thumbs down!

So they send out a platoon of 5 guys and a war photographer and they take the best defended hill in the first 30 minutes. Stopped watching at 44 minutes. Utter dross.fight scenes laughable. 2 machine gun nests taken by 4 guys and mo with carbines making a frontal assault with no cover. These guys also forgot to take their rations of grenades with them. If they had any they could have saved themselves a lot of grief in the fire fights. This hill should just have been obliterated with artillery and then assaulted by 2 tanks. No trenches, no minefields and 1 pillbox. Monte casino it was not. Thank goodness the yanks joined the war or we would all be speaking German.

Not as bad as reviewed here.

Yes the acting is stale at times, but the ordnance and elements of realism make up for it. For me; dirty uniforms, dirty faces, and realistic firefights go a long way to making a war movie watchable. Arguably the dialogue is the likeliest of culprits towards holding back this movie. There are some interesting camera shots, though camera work is wildly inconsistent with down angles in the wrong spots and such... at least the settings are well thought out and visually interesting. If they'd have added some swearing, cigarette smoking, a military advisor for the script and some heavy machinery- this would be a welcome addition to the WWII playlist.

The fact that "well trained and resupplied German soldiers" (not the weak Polish kind, as the General described them), can be seen shooting a Thompson at 5:38 (behind the German holding an MP40), and another one shooting a Grease gun at around 5:59 (hiding behind the tree) made me giggle. If they are what the General describes, then there's no need for them to use US weapons. Not to mention the poor tactics, use of ranks, lingo, and what not.

Also, this movie only portrays what seems to be a incomplete squad from 2nd Rangers. Some of the roles in the squad seem to be replaced by ordinary riflemen. It should be mentioned that there were at least 457 enlisted men and 27 officers from 2nd Rangers who went up that hill. And a whole bunch of infantry before them, sustaining a minimum of 16,000 casualties.

It's inaccurate, the acting is stale. I can't say much good about this movie. This movie clearly missed out on military advisors, and perhaps some acting classes.