Murder Company

It's D-day. American soldiers are scattered behind German lines. General Haskel (Kelsey Grammer) has a mission for five disparate soldiers from different companies. They have to rescue a French resistance fighter who would lead them to an important Nazi general in charge of transportation.

This is your basic war B-movie. I don't recognize any of the main actors except for Kelsey Grammer. Most of the budget was probably spent on him. He did some scenes with the main guys and then did a bunch of other scenes with a bunch of nobodies. It probably took him a week, five business days. The action ranges from passable to poorly staged. There are two big battles when around five good guys kill about fifty Nazis. They do throw in a couple of death scenes for the good guys. There is an evil Nazi at the end of road. This is not good.

Had to make this just to say that while the movie is indefensibly bad, a bunch of these reviewers are talking about the soldier at the beginning having a German gun. These reviewers apparently have no idea what an M3 Grease Gun is and thus shouldn't be criticizing weapons in any movie.

So don't complain about people not doing their homework when you haven't done yours either.

In regards to the movie, it definitely has the feeling of a student film. Like one of those someone made as their final assignment when they hit their Kickstarter limit. But there are certainly worse ways to spend an hour and a half.

The plot was pretty flimsy. The acting performances were reasonable considering everyone is an unknown other than Grammar with an almost cameo appearances. The fighting action would have been better if it was more realistic. Also some of the killings were just plain lazy film making. I am not a fan of 20 foot apart open ground machine gun battles. Much of it was not realistic, and some of it was quite cheesy. Nevertheless, it was not a complete waste of time, and it was slightly entertaining. Music was uninspired to say the least. Dialog was not great, but not terrible either. Direction was quite weak. It is entirely forgettable.

I have thought about this for a long time and will share my thoughts. There are so many low-budget war films out there and they all share the same qualities: less than 10 soldiers on each side running around a forest which could be your backyard; no wide angle or crane camera shots - everything looks like it was filmed with an iPhone; and less than riveting acting and dialogue. There are occasionally actors familiar from the 80's like Toms Berringer or Sizemore. I'm sure it is the same in all genres but I notice it most in war films. They just don't cut it. Maybe there is the odd Blair Witch low budget gem out there but I haven't found it.

Retired 24 year veteran says... I really can't add much insight that many of the other reviews already offer. It's historically bad, costumes rate a "meh", and the weapons...oh, the weapons are CGI wonders of imagination. Imagined by someone with very little to ZERO weapons experience. Seriously, it's a war movie so at the very least they could have Googled, Wikipedia'd, watched a YouTube video or two about the weapons. This has the appearance of a "Call of duty" video game weapons expert with CGI muzzle flashes, zero recoil, and in many cuts, no expended brass being ejected. Hahahahaha!

Okay, all done with the nonsense stuff. I suspect we all know Kelsey Grammer, he's very good. The character he plays however, well, good thing they got Kelsey Grammer to play him. Joe Anderson is a pretty good as well. That said, I didn't think it was the acting that made this movie bad. Bad writing, check! Bad directing, yup! Bad military "stuff" across the board, yeah. The actors, familiar or not, did pretty well with the hands (or lines) they were dealt. I watched it through to the end and only mostly regretted the time spent.