Réfractaire

excerpt, full review at my location.

Cinema is motion. Thriving on the kinetic, its action heroes are proactive do-gooders. But what if they're impotent, incarcerated, or stripped of devious gadgetry? Then they do the right thing. A dark moral vision, The Undercover War frames ghostly non-combatants, dissenters whose resolute inaction is valorous. Eschewing the TNT-stoked inferno of the battleground, the film plays out life-or-death scenarios in banal surrounds. This is a eulogy to kitchen-sink crusaders; little heroes whose small glories are all but invisible to the annals.

A sombre endgame, The Undercover War offers no great escapes. Competent, if lacking in formal dazzle, the film's reverent drama becomes sedate, lulling to a clammy checkmate. Whilst more downbeat than similar narratives, its predictable trajectory detracts from the realism Steil's restrained direction seeks to evoke. Slaying, and then substituting a new-old mythos, the narrative itself feels imprisoned by the classic grammar of the combat film. Digestion-smoothing viewing for dozily patriotic Sunday afternoons, this is neo-traditional fare which doesn't delve quite far enough beneath the shadows.

First of all, the front cover of the DVD depicts planes, tanks and soldiers battling it out in a glorious spectacle. NONE of this high-octane stuff appears in the final product, which is a far more sedate affair.

It revolves around a rich kid, who joins the resistance in his local neighbourhood during World War II, and ends up underground with a bunch of nutcases. Just when you think the film will be centred around these dirty, smelly mentally-deficient dudes slowly cracking under close quarters, things take another twist when our errant hero falls in love with the wife of a Nazi sympathiser, before discovering the boss of his cell has been killed by a gun-crazed colleague. DRAMA!!

The whole thing never leaps off the screen, it's just 'there', with precious little attempt to let us get to know any of the protagonists, and an abrupt ending that relies on someone making such a stupid decision he might as well have stuck his head in a lion's mouth.

It is amusing to note though, that this budget DVD from That's Entertainment has no indication that it's a Luxembourg/Switzerland production with subtitles, and this combined with the misleading, action-packed front cover will have scores of Call Of Duty chavs reaching for their receipts faster then when they grab their benefit cheques at the Post Office for 'depression'. Oops, getting a bit off track there... 5/10