Act of Honor - L'unité War Pigs

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.

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.

An hour of "training for the mission" consisting of lame buddy banter, then some action about as menacing as paint-balling, and a mercifully abrupt ending.

Photography and sound-track were acceptable. I could actually see and hear what was going on, unlike so many "straight-to-DVD" cheapies. And no pretentious gimmicks like flashbacks or twists, nothing "arty" at all. But the script and plot were like something a thirteen-year-old could come up with.

Normally in these "group of misfits thrown together" movies, whether war or disaster efforts, you get the same bunch of stereotypes, the Jew, the Black, the coward, the racist bully, the traitor, the alcoholic, the naive farm-boy, etc. This film was so half-hearted that none of the group even got depicted at that superficial level, remaining totally anonymous.

Honourable mention for Luke Goss, who gave a passable Clint Eastwood imitation. Should be considered if they ever make a Clint biopic.

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.

This must rank as one of the worst researched and acted war movies of recent years. US soldiers disheveled and unkempt, dirty dozen-like, an absolutely absurd scenario and on top of it all, no research as to uniforms and army traditions. Foreign Legion officers never wear or wore the kepi blanc and the character of the tooth-pick chewing long-haired US "colonel" complete with his cowboy hat is absolutely ridiculous. The acting is terrible throughout and full of boring stereotypes. One wonders if this is meant to be a war movie or a B-movie parody. 1 out of then 10 is too good for this disaster of a movie!