Guerra sporca

Passchendaele is a decent World War One film, one of the best out there and there's not too many it has minor flaws but does the job brilliantly. Paul Gross has done a great job acting in and directing this film. Some may be put off by the love story but for me this just reinforces and shows the losses of many people during this time period and era. Passchendaele shows how many people who once lived to together as neighbors are divided by stupid things like family nationality and false loyalty and bad promises of adventure and glory.

The love story isn't for everyone but wow many girlfriends and wives lost partners and how many young men never came home to true love or had a chance to live full lives? This film does get you thinking!

Of course this is no Band Of Brothers in terms of scale (I know that's World War Two) but Paul Gross has done extremely well acting and directly. I find this film to be a good tribute to his Grandfather and to those who lost something because of World War One.

The film is low budget however this doesn't really show to be honest and this is a fitting tribute and good story! With regards to the low budget the battle scenes could have been bigger and better but this is by no means a bad film.

The acting and casting is spot on and this film really does show the stupid ill placed passion and faulted logic of young people in this era and, it shows the pressure many had to go through and be forced to fight for freedom not knowing what the loses and costs would be. World War One was a slaughter and waste of millions of lives and the deaths of certain characters and the gruesome way they die shows this war was not the fairy tale adventures many painted it to be at the start.

Among all the blood and slaughter there is a story and the film does well to reflect and show not everyone fighting was a murderer or cold blooded killer and many just wanted it to end.

We need more World War One films like this to teach young people the truths and to keep history alive so we don't make the same mistakes again.

Passchendaele is part unabashed romance and part horrific and quite graphic war story.

In film World War One has been a neglected war compared to the more morally unambiguous Second World War and the more recent Vietnam War. And films that aren't about American participation are just as neglected. Passchendaele fills that void.

The movie moves quickly and switches between home life and battlefield with surprising ease and effect. I was not bored for a moment of this movie. The movie will make you care about these people when they are at home living their lives and then fear for them at war. While the battle scenes are quite brutal, they are not sensational or exploitive, since to have made them sensational or exploitive would defeat the great effort this movie takes in showing how men had to cope with life after the war and the memories of what they lived through.

Undoubtedly there will be cynics who will decry some moments as contrived or melodramatic, but these are the small-minded who have missed the real emotion of this film. The movie is great entertainment, but there is something going on beneath the surface. This is the first time I can recall a film where the main character is someone who has been both emotionally damaged by the war, but does not succumb to it. I suspect there must be many men coming out of the war who were damaged, but quietly lived with that damage their entire lives. For that depiction alone, this is a great movie.

The movie is not without humour and it has one of the funniest seduction lines I've ever heard uttered by a woman in a movie.

The movie is entertaining, but there's a lot going on and much I haven't mentioned as I don't want to click the spoiler warning. There are scenes I'm still thinking about, which doesn't happen with every movie I see.

At last a genuine Canadian movie... Calgary is Calgary... The Americans didn't win the battle, didn't even turn up anywhere... There were no Stars and Stripes in every office. Okay, the plot --- a sort of WW1 Saving Private Ryan effort set against the bloody Belgian battle --- is a little far fetched. But the scenes --- both in 1916 Calgary and in the mud and horror of the battlefield --- are as good as those in any WW1 movie I've seen. There are believable characters well portrayed both in the script and by the actors. The effects are superb. The lighting and cinematography are sensitive and creative. And how very impressive that Paul Gross was a triple threat man. He wrote it, he directed it and he starred in it. That totals 300% This is as good as they come.

Paul Gross' Passchendaele provides a unique perspective of the Canadian effort during the First World War. Those who are expecting just battle scenes will likely be disappointed.

For those looking for character development, some romance, an interesting perspective on recruitment pressure, and yes -- AMAZING battle scenes -- then yes, this movie is for you.

As a Military History student, I had no issues with the historical accuracy of the movie. Paul Gross based the first 5 minutes on his grandfather's story, and the rest is historical fiction. In general, it is an excellent representation of the period, and certainly provides a much more realistic version of the soldiers' perspective on war in 1917 than many other war films out there.

I highly recommend this film.

Wow. Great flick!

Besides being an admitted movie addict, I'm also a retired professional soldier and a combat veteran who's served in multiple theaters of conflict.

I usually find myself quietly disappointed with war movies in general, and their vain, highly stylized, cliché-laden attempts to realistically portray infantry warfare, and high-intensity warfare's effects on soldiers. Film-makers invariably seem to fall far short in their attempts to capture the essence of what war can be (or was) like, and what exposure to it can do to the people involved, both mentally and physically.

To his great credit, I think that in Passchendaele Paul Gross seems to have actually managed to capture a reasonably authentic glimpse into both the nature of such hellish environments and the men caught up in them.

The acting was superb. The performances were so convincing that the notion that I was just sitting watching a movie didn't even occur to me until the credits began to roll by, I was so totally engrossed.

This film was easily one of the best that I've seen in quite some time.

I'll definitely be keeping my eyes open for any future films by Paul Gross. Passchendaele stands as an extremely impressive testimonial to his obvious talents.