Allies

I will prefix this review by stating that I have no personal connection to the film at all. I am history buff and like to support British indy films, so that is why I bought it.

About every three months or so as if by weird synchronicity a World War 2 movie on DVD you have never heard of will magically appear on the shelves of your local Tescoe's or Sainsbury's - Often their starring people you have also never heard of or occasionally one vaguely familiar name from television somewhere. Sometimes their films from Russia, Norway, Poland Or Denmark and even the biggest budget of those can often disappoint (See my review for Stalingrad) While others like Citeron and Flame are superb pieces of work - Other times their extremely low budget and appear to have been made at the behest of all the worst ideas possible (See Rhineland) Others are well crafted little films that do their best with extremely limited resources - The best of these so far has been the Saints and Soldiers series (I have the third one awaiting my viewing pleasure next door) Frequently these films have rather glossy artwork covers, invariably with a picture of a tank that almost never appears in the actual movie and a visual display that suggests far more action and adventure than the film goes on to deliver. Allies does feature an actual tank, but its not on the cover of the DVD - As luck would have it the makers of Allies have realised that good casting and decent dialogue rather than a tank on the cover, for a better film do make!

Allies is an earnest attempt at creating a boy's own War Movie old school style and while they don't quite have the budget to pull it off entirely they certain have a dam good try.

Its the summer of 1944, The Normandy Campaign is over and the Allies are steaming into France and heading to the Dutch, Belgian and German borders. The Germans are preparing their defences and getting ready to fall behind The West Wall, so our heroes led by Captain Gabriel Jackson (Julian Ovendon from Downton Abbey) are to parachute in and attack a small convoy led by an SS commander who is touring the local defences and has maps of their dispositions. But the enemy seems to know their coming - could their be a traitor in their midst?

Such is the rather simple set up of ALLIES - Okay so its not a plot on par with 'Where Eagles Dare' though there were moments when radio calls were being made which led myself and my friends to call out 'Broadsword calling Danny Boy! The traitor in the midst seems rather obvious from the word go due to the over acting of the gentleman concerned, but on the whole this is a very made movie. Good Production Design and Photography stand out here and the acting from some of the members of the squad is especially good - special mentions to Matt Willis, Chris Reily, Leon Vickers and Edmund Kingsley all of whom make their mark, the latter almost with no dialogue at all. The film isn't perfect by any means - While care is taken in the earlier scenes to establish these characters it seems a shame that several of them die 45 minutes into the movie (Two of the best actors among them) and the Germans continually turning up gets repetitive after a while offering little in the way of surprises. A toe amputation scene felt added for gory effect but on the whole this is a well made, well intentioned film with German actor for hire Eric Redman commanding the Wehrmacht ranks along with every re- inactor they could get giving it a bigger than its actual budget feel. Three of us watched it last night and we can be quite critical, especially of war movies, but we all enjoyed it and while the plot and aspects of the story could have been stronger and the summary at the end of the film really only adds a historical context which is tenuous at best to the story that preceded it, this is well worth seeing and something of which all who were involved in it can be proud of.

During the heyday of British war films in Fifties, Allies would have fitted in nicely as the B movie to some better fayre. But trying to push it out alone in 2014 was always going to be a disaster. The film received no distribution as it offers nothing we haven't seen a hundred times before. The core audience for films like this is 50+ so there needs to be an angle to even get it noticed. A simple commando raid and journey back through the lines was the staple of so many films (and TV shows), far better done, that it's difficult to maintain any involvement in the shrinking cast of new faces in this.

The budget meant that the one German armoured car kept coming up again and again bit like the Daleks going round and round in old Doctor Who. Nobody had a clue how to use their weapons. You do not loose off machine gun rounds from the hip. You'd miss your target and have to reload except you'd be dead by then. You also don't stand up as sitting ducks as the Germans continually do. They gave the Germans the same bullets from When Eagles Dare whilst the Allies bullets were everlasting.Nice but unbelievable.

This is a ten year old boy's idea of a war film. Constant gun battles, sacrifices and noise. And the odd tit for Dad. On a streaming service only to fill the shelves.

This is my first review, and I was inspired to submit it, in part, by how appalling this film is....and by other reviews giving it a favourable notice and possibly luring people into wasting a couple of hours of their lives watching what is, essentially no more than an animated teenagers comic.... such as the Commando magazines I used to colour in back in the day. The acting and direction are laugh-out- loud bad and the plot, such as it is, ludicrous. It contains all the clichés (All American hero stages a remarkable recovery from near fatal infection, comedy German accents and heroic French peasant popping up the stairs to save the day, trite dedication at the end credits) and corny dialogue. The budget battle scenes look like they were staged by the local historical re-enactment society clumped on the village green on a Sunday afternoon. This film has no redeeming features and I'd be surprised if we see any of the actors portraying the British officers at headquarters ever again. So perhaps, after all, Allies has served a purpose. Honestly, life is short. There are hundreds of better things to do with your time.

I find myself being burned quite frequently these days by the review scores on IMDb. I guess it is a testament to the sites popularity that efforts are obviously made these days to drive up scores.

Personally when I see an above average score I double check on rotten tomatoes, where Allies doesn't even have a score - IE it's gone completely unnoticed into the world.

Anyhoo, I won't waste your time with the plot which has been covered in other reviews. Nor will I dwell on the diabolical script / camera work etc.

I'm a WW2 buff so gave this a punt, but much as I love the genre I do require a bit of realism from battle scenes and I got none of that here.

For example, British para's - I was one - do NOT wear red berets in combat (for reasons I'd hope would be obvious). The soldiers in the film did, whilst they stood around in bunched groups trading pot shots with the Germans. The para who poked his up over the grass verge to take a quick peek wearing what was effectively a red lantern on his head deserved what happened, sniped of all things by a machine gunner.

Whilst still under fire squaddies do not take a break to run back to a fallen comrade and squat by him - in the open - to bemoan the tragedies of war.

Give this one a miss.

Allies begins with a good premise, the rivalry between the Yanks and the Brits. On a personal level, having written a book called Zepka's War, parts of which take place in the hedgerows of France, I enjoyed watching the Germans get mowed down in what could have been some of those same hedgerows. But back to the movie. It's understandable that we will likely never see authentic WWII tanks in war movies these days, and that the uniforms will be questionable as to authenticity, but what I will never get used to, and for which there is no excuse, the need for injecting current terms such as "are we good?" are we good to go?" and "Roger that," into WWII films being made today. Are producers and directors really that stupid?