War Pigs

Having lived through those trying times, I can relate. I felt that, overall, this film was pretty accurate in the way the characters looked, dressed and acted. My wife criticized the constant smoking, but I told her that's what men did in those days, especially when the cigarettes were free. The language too, I felt was much more realistic than in many WWII films. In those days, even foul-mouthed tough guys seldom muttered the word "fuck" or "fucking". Mickey Rourke was the only guy in the film who did that a few times, but being Mickey Rourke, I guess he can get away with that. However, his use of "disrespect" was unforgivable. I'm not sure when that popular word came into use but it sure wasn't back in the '40s or '50s, etc. More like the '90s, and more like gang talk, not military jargon. Of course, as with any film, there have to be contrivances to make things work, and that's okay. Here, a group of misfits dubbed the War Pigs (think half a Dirty Dozen) are sent in on a mission to destroy the infamous V3 cannon. In reality, there were several and I really don't believe any were actually destroyed by allied armies. Rather, the Normandy invasion caused the Nazis to remove a couple, others were dismantled as encroaching allied troops caused the Nazis to break the guns down themselves to avoid having them captured by the Allies. But these guys did a pretty good job and held their own. Overall I enjoyed this a lot more than many war stories since it wasn't filled with as much blood and guts as are so many. It focused more on the men's training, their actual mission and their relationships. I would swear however, than when the leader of the mission was chosen, he was a captain. Two minutes later and up until the end of the film he was a lieutenant. Maybe I missed something. Someone else complained about Dolph Lundgren's French accent. (a) he has become a really formidable actor in his old age, given the chance to do something besides play a Universal Soldier type, and (b) I believe, in the film, he was actually German (probably from Alsace which has an identity problem), who had been conscripted by the Nazis. He slipped off and joined La Légion Etrangère and came back to fight for right and justice and all that good stuff. Overall, I thought this was a pretty good war flick. I'm not normally a war movie lover. I never saw Inglorious, etc. but my wife picked this up at a Red Box, and we could have done a lot worse, as in "Knock Knock". Oy!

Of all the people who worked on "War Pigs" in front of or behind the camera, only Dolph Lundgren survives more or less intact. His character was written with a few interesting quirks, and Lundgren does put in some effort in his performance. The rest of the cast and characters have nothing special about them to report (Mickey Rourke only has three brief scenes, for one thing.) The drab characters and performances are just part of the reason why this movie is surprisingly dull. The first half of the movie (mostly to do with training the title squad) has almost no action. And the training is nothing special, just routines you've seen in other special mission movies before, with not even any comic relief to stir things up (at least, comic relief that's funny.) Once the movie moves to the actual mission, things aren't that much better. The movie is still slow moving and boring, even when they throw in some token action (which always ends not long after it begins.) I've seen documentaries that had much more life than what's found in this movie.

Its not slightly shaky, its abusively shaky. Extreme close ups are gratuitous and leave the viewer without a sense of whats going on in the scene. The dialog was one dimensional. Bottom line, it tried way too hard to be cool and comes across as amateur and insulting to history and the viewer. I couldn't finish the film, so I can't speak for how it ends. But watching it was painful and nauseating. Its a real shame because I've been looking forward to its release for a while. I really wanted to like this movie. But at the end of the day, its produced so poorly that its rendered unwatchable. When producers realize that movies are about telling a story, in this case history, instead of trying to be cool, they'll stop getting overall failing grades at IMDb. Investors are throwing away their money.

Let's be honest, you saw the cast or description and thought this would be an action packed war movie. Sad to say, War Pigs is a slow trudging march of bad acting and unappealing script. Even the supposed big names like Mickey Rourke and Chuck Liddell only appear briefly and what little action it has is done without finesse.

Story follows Dolph Lundgren and Luke Goss as they assemble rag tag squad to overcome Nazi advances. This is practically the whole movie, they recruit some people, train them while creating bond of brotherhood. It may sound good if it had better material, yet the plot is barren and tedious. Be it may the actors or dialogues, neither are interesting.

War movie is tricky, it inherently has some expectations and emotions involved. Many movies with better cast and production have mixed result, War Pigs have none the polished delivery nor the gritty nature to pull off this kind of scale. It's simply a few men bantering for an hour and half. The subject may have been engaging, but the presentation offers barely any battle of wit or actual battle at all.

If the slow pace hasn't deterred the audience, the flimsy action would. With the leading action stars, the movie could have done at least action sequences right, instead it only produces a very amateurish effort. The camera lacks focus and gun fight doesn't even look remotely real. It probably wouldn't help much since the cumulative action is probably only ten minutes or less.

War Pigs certainly doesn't have the depth to present cerebral war theme, it lacks the production to capitalize on the action oriented cast and it's far from authentic to appeal to military fans. It only gives a sense of desolation and tediousness for the audience.

A Dirty Dozen kind of story. Some heroics, happy ending. I would have loved this film when I was ten years old. For a war film, it's about average.