Before the War - Allegiance

This is a small budget independent film that delivers a meaningful storyline and suspense that kept me on the edge of my seat. The plot is believable and the main characters, while simple, have an interesting back-story.

The soundtrack is especially solid and helps the film to build intensity. Additionally, it seems the director chose a monochromatic color/hue which gives the film a unique sense of reality (void of lots of distracting colors...not sure how else to explain it).

If you are interested in watching films with substance and need a change from the big Hollywood blockbusters, I suggest giving Allegiance a try.

I ordered this DVD only to see Reshma Shetty act outside of Royal Pains. Unfortunately her role in this movie is minimal. I didn't get to see much. But what I found instead was a really good movie and impressive performances. I won't go into the details of the plot as others have covered that. But the story is well written. The characters are all multifaceted and believable. The good guys aren't all good; the bad guys aren't all bad. Each has a back story that gets delivered to us in due time. Bow Wow (that can't be what's on his birth certificate) gave perhaps the most surprising performance of the whole movie. I'm not one who thinks that every rap artist should be an actor. Mr. Wow is a pleasant exception. I'd look forward to seeing him in other works. Pablo Schreiber has one of those "that guy" kind of faces. Like you know you've seen him before but can't remember where. And that's a huge shame because his performance was all anyone had any right to expect from him. Because of who his brother is he might get over looked but don't make that mistake. Take him on his own merits and enjoy his talents. Reshma Shetty, for her part, performed flawlessly but her role was so minimal that there wasn't much she could do with it. I'd sure like to see more from this woman. Someone should write bigger and better roles for her. Maybe I'll do it myself.

Bottom line: A very good movie.

I thought this movie had possibilities. Then the first scene has a Lt. Bribing a sergeant. While I won't say that doesn't happen, it certainly isn't that blatant. The interaction with lower enlisted and officers in the guard is fairly realistic, I find it funny the "active duty" Lt. Doesn't take offense to being called by his first name. The scenes where they are trying to fake the sergeant out by playing poker are pretty close to accurate,a lot of other stuff... Not so much. The new Lt and his getting screwed story sucks. Yeah he saw combat and got wounded. According to this story, that's it. He still had his IRR left. There are way more worse stories about that out there. I personally had to extend a year so I could deploy. Past my 20 years.I missed not deploying by a month, and yet I didn't try some massive trick to get out of it. I went. Anyway, there were possibilities in this movie, but a lot fell flat.

I really enjoyed this movie the whole story line.I thought all the actors did a great job and it is a army movie but a good one. I recommend it to anyone who likes military and suspense movies.Its a must see movie. It has new stars like bow wow who use to rap but he makes a good actor too. It has a lot of older actors as well who are good. It doesn't have bloody gore military war stuff but it is military clean.This movie to me in my opinion and i watch a lot of movies of all Genres this movie is a 10. I don't care what anybody says its excellent to me.Maybe cause I am female and it has a lot of handsome actors but they all did well.

A film of noble intentions. From director, scripwriter, actors, characters. Using army life as pretext for a noble message. But this message is not convincing, or realist, or easy accepted by viewer. Sure, the effort for create a dramatic - touching story is lovely. But it does not works . And it is not a real specific guilty. Only the conclusion. But, for view Aidan Quin and appreciate the work of actors for save an easy story, the film deserves some attention.