Condor's Nest

I guess I got suckered by the trailer. I kept thinking it has to get better but it only got worse. If it was supposed to be a serious drama, it wasn't. If a comedy, there was absolutely nothing funny. If it was to have been historically accurate it completely missed the mark.

Bad dialogue, acting that wasn't convincing, cinematography that was embarrassingly poor and the best editing that could have been done was to cut all of it and throw it away.

When compared to so many of the movies that were produced by Amazon I just don't get why this got the green light.

I definitely wasted my time watching this terrible excuse for a movie.

I'll start on a couple of positive notes.

There are two good things about this movie: 1) It's in color, and 2) It ended.

I'd say about 33% of this film is people being held at gunpoint, 33% is people being shot in the head, and the final third is people yelling at each other.

There's one long stretch with Heinrich Himmler (who here looks like a dead ringer for Hitler, which he wasn't in real life) heading up a meeting of 10 or so old Nazis (all speaking German so you have to read the subtitles throughout, whereas it would have been a good place for them to just slip into English with a German accent.

There's a long opening scene in which, after the Americans' bomber crashes near the "front lines" in France but most of the crew survives, a really bad SS guy (you'll recognize him from one of the Mummy movies) shows up, holds the crew at gunpoint, then eventually shoots all of them in the head just for giggles. It sets the thematic tone for the whole movie.

And did I mention poor acting throughout the film? Yeah, it's there and it's pretty consistent.

I dunno - maybe 2 stars is a bit generous for this one.

This began like some of the better WWII flicks and captured our attention. There is intrigue as we ferret out the plot. But somewhere in the middle it degenerated into too much soap opera, with the realization that there was a writers' addiction to regular and over-used pistol-to-the-head killing. The wife quit and left for bed halfway through. I should have, but hoped it would wash out better... it didn't.

There was some good acting, but the overall movie sank, especially near the end where the main character gets hold of a heavy gun and starts killing dozens of bad guys, bad guys with automatic rifles, and that are dumb enough to keep incessantly running into the open in front of him, as comrades fall under their feet.

As realistic and engaging as this thing started, it sure degraded into just another lousy unrealistic shoot ''em up by its finish.

No spoilers. This movie open was so much promise. The first half of the movie is excellent. The protagonist is ruthless and it's consistent with the character. However, the second half of the movie the protagonist turns into a beta male, the girl boss shows up and saves the day, and, the scenes with the Nazis are played to whimsical tone. That's almost a separate movie from the first half. Really disappointing that the movie didn't hold it serious tone throughout the movie. What opened as a movie about Obsession and ruthlessness, degrades into standard adventure, fair and inappropriate whimsical scenes that are not consistent with first half of the movie.

Right, well I have to admit that I hadn't heard about this 2023 movie titled "Condor's Nest" from writer and director Phil Blattenberger prior to sitting down to watch it. And I wasn't exactly harboring much of any high hopes for the movie, as the movie's synopsis and cover wasn't exactly screaming top notch entertainment.

However, I opted to watch the movie and give writer and director Phil Blattenberger the benefit of the doubt.

And color me impressed, because "Condor's Nest" turned out to be rather enjoyable and entertaining. The storyline was far better than I had initially feared, and an interesting character gallery definitely helped bring the movie to life on the screen.

They also had a good cast ensemble of actors and actresses on the cast list. And I will say that the performances in the movie were quite good.

Visually then "Condor's Nest" was an okay movie. But luckily it was not a movie that was depending on having an array of over-the-top special effects. Whatever effects were in the movie served their purpose quite well.

What really was good here, was the fact that the Germans actually spoke German. I loathe it when you watch something where it is just English with a thick caricature accent slapped on top of it. Having the Germans actually speaking German just adds a whole layer of credibility to the movie.

I was genuinely entertained and surprised with "Condor's Nest". And it is a movie that is well-worth spending 102 minutes on watching.

My rating of "Condor's Nest" lands on a six out of ten stars.