Battle Force

I watched it through to the end. That's something. Especially since, in the opening scene, American GIs are firing bolt-action rifles as though they were M-1 semi-automatics, never once working the bolt. As the movie shows, they HAD at least one old Garand on set, that they could have used in that scene accurately, but no. The script delivered a sprinkling of facts about the First Special Service Force, and then ladled on a ton of malarkey. I won't address the fact that the set looked the same no matter where anyone was supposed to be, thousands of miles apart, and others have rightly criticized defects in costuming, weaponry, etc. I'll only say that, when the main Nazi bad guy stands TWICE out in the open, once marvelously silhouetted by the skyline, at, for the military, very close range, and highly trained commandos can't hit him, with an aimed Garand, a BAR, even the supernaturally accurate submachine guns, while your random, unaimed snap shots are taking out Germans who are firing from cover, well ... There are other, more egregious crimes against history, good movie making, and the laws of physics in this movie, but we'll leave it at that. The closing scene, I can say without spoiling the movie, was particularly wrong headed. Having read three books about the FSSF, I can say that anyone with a smattering of that information could have crafted a screenplay better than what was served up, with the same guns, costumes, and characters, and made a decent movie out of it, since their ACTUAL exploits still rate as fantastic, without exaggeration, to this day.

Let me begin by stating I suffered permanent brain damage watching this film. Just a little warning before we begin.

I appreciate the effort put into to making a film...I really do. Not much here to praise outside the competent camera work. This poor creature should be put down and given a decent burial.

This film revolves around a group of 1st Special Service Force guys scoping out Sicily prior to the allied invasion. Hey guys, the 1st SSF was never used in Sicily since the unit was heading for the Aleutians at the time. If I'm wrong I apologize.

The actors try hard. There just isn't much to work with. Watch for the largest 101st Airborne paratrooper in history. Probably took two chutes for him to make it to the ground safely. Check out the lip gloss on one of the partisan chicks. Very popular in Sicily at the time.

The combat scenes, if you can call them that, are just awful. Come on guys, there has to be someone in California who did a hitch in the Army Infantry. A little tactical advice could have gone a long way.

My suggestion is to dig up a copy of the "Devil's Brigade" with William Holden and watch that if you want a good war film with 1st Special Service Force action.

I love World War II movies. I have enjoyed ones made during World War II through the present. I have enjoyed all countries of origin from the Nazi propaganda turkey "Stuka" on. I enjoy movies about all sides and all theatres of the war, if it's a well done movie. Alas, Battle Recon definitely is not.

It's normally a very bad sign when the director, the writer and the top billed star are all the same person. It was. With ludicrous acting and an utterly cliché script there was little to save the movie. The even had utterly cliché characters like the classic black on black trench coat evil SS officer.

The script wasn't just cliché, it was 21st century politically correct cliché. The day had to be saved by two Italian partisan women.

It's not difficult to get historical continuity in World War II movies. There are so many armchair experts to assist you. Obviously they didn't bother to go to gunboards.com and ask for a decent one. The German uniforms were clearly East German uniforms with Nazi insignias sewn on. They were almost all SS insignias, like they had hired cheaply a bunch of re-enactors.

They couldn't even get basic continuity items right. The Italian partisan's gun kept switching between a Mauser and a M1 Garand. It was as if they put down their guns between shots and couldn't even tell everyone to pick up the right one between shots.

Don't bother with this one, not with thousands of better World War II movies out there.

I picked this movie up on a whim, one of many recent low budget WW2 movies that seem to have been hitting the shelves of the straight to DVD market. I have no problem with low budget films of this type and recently there have been some good ones and this one starts out with noble intentions as the opening titles would suggest, that the film is about the story of a real unit, made up of Americans and Canadians (The Film the Devils Brigade covers the actual unit) but here unfortunately is where the factual content of the film ends.

Set just before the invasion of Scily an American recon unit (Apparently the 101st Airborne who never actually were there) are captured and another team is sent to rescue them. That's the plot in a nutshell. The DOP has gone to some considerable effort to give the film a warm feel to represent the right part of Europe, but this can't let the film escape the fact that it was obviously all shot in California. I would have thought someone could have least grabbed a camera and taken some shots of the actual island which could have been nicely edited in to compensate for this. The acting wasn't all bad, and there were some funny lines,(plenty are just awful) but that's the problem with this film, it gives the impression its going to be about a factual battle, then half way through tries to become Kelly's Heroes and does neither successfully. The unit don't act like a military unit, moving with caution in one shot and then sauntering along the same path with not a care in the world in the next moment. The Nazi officer is just comical and stands in the middle of the road firing his gun while gunfire rages all around him. The fight scenes are actually quite boring and full of continuity issues and often make little sense to the plot or serve to enhance the story. (Such as it is) This project obviously started out with good intentions and its not as bad as 'Rhineland' (That's way worse) but somewhere it got lost and couldn't decide what it wanted to be. If your going to make films set in Europe, then you need to look at A Midnight Clear for an example of how to do it properly (Shot entirely on location in the USA)

I wanted to like this film and for a brief moment I thought I might, but in the end there was just too much that was wrong with it, which was a shame, because there could have been a good little film here. Alas sadly not.

To be fair, I watched only the first 20 minutes of this movie, so my comments are only based on that. I might have hung around if WWII Sicily's "landscape" wasn't so easily recognizable as that of Southern California. I gave up hope when several shots showed the film's characters walking along railroad tracks on top of modern concrete ties with modern signals in the background.

I get the feeling this movie was a film school project. And if it was, then I guess it's OK for that purpose. If not, at least it was a good opportunity for inexperienced actors to put something in their blank resumes.

The combat special effects were OK... enough has been said by others regarding the realism of the combat itself, but I thought the special effects used for weapons discharge and bullet flight was OK... more realistic than those we used to see 15-20 years ago. That earned this movie its 3rd star.