Post by Harkovast on Dec 22, 2014 21:23:54 GMT
I didn't really enjoy this film.
It was a well made film, it had a lot of tension.
But I wouldn't really call it enjoyable.
There was a really awesome scene where they were in a tavern and you were wondering if the Germans soldiers were going to catch them or not which I enjoyed...but over all it was not fun to watch.
I think the problem was that the Americans in it were really really horrible.
Which, considering they were fighting evil Nazis who machine gunned innocent Jews and strangled unarmed women to death...is saying something.
The whole gimic had them going around occupied France ambushing and killing German soldiers. This is a pretty silly concept at the best of times and obviously would not have really worked. (Where would the Americans sleep? Who supplies them? What about German reprisals? How do they get informed of where the Germans are to attack them? The film seemed to suggest they just walked around a forest machine gunning any Germans they happened across.) The idea that eight guys would have been even the slightest problem for the Germans to deal with really stretched my suspension of disbelief.
But silliness aside...the Americans were really fucked up.
Germans they captured they would brutally murder, including a character who enjoyed beating them to death with a baseball bat while the others laughed.
The Americans also had no problem machine gunning women (including fleeing, unarmed civilian women who they shot in the backs.)
As far as I could tell they were exactly as bad as the Germans they were fighting.
The final scene of Nazi killing carnage made me feel disgusted rather than exhilarated. The close up on the really psychotic expressions on the American soldiers face as they fired into a crowd was repellent to me.
Other than a rather weak "the Germans started it" defence, there seems nothing to differentiate the two groups.
Everyone was a psychotic asshole, so why should I feel happy about anything they do? I ended up feeling saddened to see any of them survive by the end.
But what really got me was not just a story telling perspective, it was that suggesting American soldiers were a bad as Nazis...I dunno...that doesn't seem cool. Especially when they made a point that they were Jewish Americans (chosen for that express reason.)
Jews committing war crimes against Nazis? Yeeeah....that doesn't really sit right with me.
While bad things happen in war, I am sure some American soldiers behaved badly yadda yadda yadda, the idea that they had anything like the systematic and instituationalised evil of the Nazis is kind of offensive. Americans torturing and murdering prisoners? In a War where the Nazis actively murdered prisoners (including at least one occasion when they murdered captured Americans) acting as if both sides were doing it...that is kind of fucked up.
I don't like revenge fantasies...they make me uncomfortable.
I think imagining horrible things you want to do to someone you hate is crass and unconstructive. We all do it sometimes, but we should also probably all try to do it less. I dislike the impotent rage of the revenge fantasy, imagining ghastly acts that you will never have the opportunity to do....and that's what this film felt like to me.
Lots of anger and hate at the Nazis.
But we cant hurt the Nazis.
All those in their regime of any importance are long dead, as are their victims.
History puts them beyond our reach now, so seeing them slaughtered with such relish just felt empty and meaningless. We see Hitler machine gunned in the face but its just a reminder that in real life we didn't get to see him die, or even see his body. We didn't get the chance to parade this greatest villain out in defeat. Doing so now, 70 years later, in a movie...I mean whats the point? I don't feel better for his "death". Why should I? It's not real and never will be. When the American soldier is emptying a machine gun into a dead Hitlers face...I hate the soldier as much as I hate Hitler. In fact perhaps I hate the soldier more, as he is a developed character in the movie, rather than a cliche recreation of one of the most often recreated people in history. The soldier has been shown to be monstrous and hateful throughout the film, Hitlers evil is just taken for granted (because its Hitler and we all know hes bad.)
Well the film gave me something to talk about, had some good performances and left an impression. You could possibly defend the film on the grounds that it is so ludicrous in its revisionist history, to the point that clearly its not meant to be educational or even taken seriously. It even features a subtle dig at itself, when the Germans watch a film that is basically a long sequence of Americans being killed by a German soldier in graphic detail... a reverse of the film we are actually watching. But again its that idea of moral equivalence between America and the Nazis, and I cannot accept that.
So a good film in one sense....
But I didn't enjoy the experience.
It was a well made film, it had a lot of tension.
But I wouldn't really call it enjoyable.
There was a really awesome scene where they were in a tavern and you were wondering if the Germans soldiers were going to catch them or not which I enjoyed...but over all it was not fun to watch.
I think the problem was that the Americans in it were really really horrible.
Which, considering they were fighting evil Nazis who machine gunned innocent Jews and strangled unarmed women to death...is saying something.
The whole gimic had them going around occupied France ambushing and killing German soldiers. This is a pretty silly concept at the best of times and obviously would not have really worked. (Where would the Americans sleep? Who supplies them? What about German reprisals? How do they get informed of where the Germans are to attack them? The film seemed to suggest they just walked around a forest machine gunning any Germans they happened across.) The idea that eight guys would have been even the slightest problem for the Germans to deal with really stretched my suspension of disbelief.
But silliness aside...the Americans were really fucked up.
Germans they captured they would brutally murder, including a character who enjoyed beating them to death with a baseball bat while the others laughed.
The Americans also had no problem machine gunning women (including fleeing, unarmed civilian women who they shot in the backs.)
As far as I could tell they were exactly as bad as the Germans they were fighting.
The final scene of Nazi killing carnage made me feel disgusted rather than exhilarated. The close up on the really psychotic expressions on the American soldiers face as they fired into a crowd was repellent to me.
Other than a rather weak "the Germans started it" defence, there seems nothing to differentiate the two groups.
Everyone was a psychotic asshole, so why should I feel happy about anything they do? I ended up feeling saddened to see any of them survive by the end.
But what really got me was not just a story telling perspective, it was that suggesting American soldiers were a bad as Nazis...I dunno...that doesn't seem cool. Especially when they made a point that they were Jewish Americans (chosen for that express reason.)
Jews committing war crimes against Nazis? Yeeeah....that doesn't really sit right with me.
While bad things happen in war, I am sure some American soldiers behaved badly yadda yadda yadda, the idea that they had anything like the systematic and instituationalised evil of the Nazis is kind of offensive. Americans torturing and murdering prisoners? In a War where the Nazis actively murdered prisoners (including at least one occasion when they murdered captured Americans) acting as if both sides were doing it...that is kind of fucked up.
I don't like revenge fantasies...they make me uncomfortable.
I think imagining horrible things you want to do to someone you hate is crass and unconstructive. We all do it sometimes, but we should also probably all try to do it less. I dislike the impotent rage of the revenge fantasy, imagining ghastly acts that you will never have the opportunity to do....and that's what this film felt like to me.
Lots of anger and hate at the Nazis.
But we cant hurt the Nazis.
All those in their regime of any importance are long dead, as are their victims.
History puts them beyond our reach now, so seeing them slaughtered with such relish just felt empty and meaningless. We see Hitler machine gunned in the face but its just a reminder that in real life we didn't get to see him die, or even see his body. We didn't get the chance to parade this greatest villain out in defeat. Doing so now, 70 years later, in a movie...I mean whats the point? I don't feel better for his "death". Why should I? It's not real and never will be. When the American soldier is emptying a machine gun into a dead Hitlers face...I hate the soldier as much as I hate Hitler. In fact perhaps I hate the soldier more, as he is a developed character in the movie, rather than a cliche recreation of one of the most often recreated people in history. The soldier has been shown to be monstrous and hateful throughout the film, Hitlers evil is just taken for granted (because its Hitler and we all know hes bad.)
Well the film gave me something to talk about, had some good performances and left an impression. You could possibly defend the film on the grounds that it is so ludicrous in its revisionist history, to the point that clearly its not meant to be educational or even taken seriously. It even features a subtle dig at itself, when the Germans watch a film that is basically a long sequence of Americans being killed by a German soldier in graphic detail... a reverse of the film we are actually watching. But again its that idea of moral equivalence between America and the Nazis, and I cannot accept that.
So a good film in one sense....
But I didn't enjoy the experience.