Santos ou Soldados: A Ultima Missão

This film illustrates the brilliance of the nascent Saints and Soldiers franchise and after watching The Void, you'll pray that more installments are coming.

The first few scenes have some clumsy, cheesy dialogue that tries to develop the characters. That's on the director's shoulders. But stick around--the real character development and some quality acting comes once the shells and bullets start to fly.

This is a compelling plot--an African American soldier is, through no fault of his own, thrown in with a couple of tank crews with a few men who don't want him around.

I won't spoil a thing. If you can get through the first 20 minutes or so, then prepare for very good war story that shows what all men are made of in a foxhole.

The score is fantastic, too. This doesn't rise past 8/10 because of the cheesy stuff early on and some improbable scenes during firefights (plenty of those, too).

We can only hope that the S&S rights owners have many more such fine films in development.

The movie isn't as bad as I expected from a low budget film (and it shows it's low budget). The acting isn't half bad, but it's not the greatest either. Some of the dialogue is cheesy and feels out of place sometime. The plot and story are interesting though.

2 US tank destroyers are caught in an ambush by 3 Wehrmacht tanks in a no-man's land area. The German ambush had previously caught 2 trucks transferring liberated POWs and the only survivors are one of the drivers (who is an African-American) and a British captain. Now they must all fight together to take out the Germans, before an unsuspecting US General, on his way for an inspection, as well as any other Allied forces are caught by the Germans.

The story focuses a lot on racial disputes in the US army at that time. You have the African-American sergeant who is the most experienced of the lot, trying to take charge of the situation, while 2 men from the tank crews are bigoted against him. The British captain goes on to mostly fight by himself as he's trying to avenge the death of his fellow prisoners. All in all, some of the characters are interesting. The delivery of the message it wants to convey is kinda blunt towards the end, but it's still worth the watch. The movie is more focused on action than previous films in the Saints and Soldiers series.

6/10

This movie, while not horrible, is obviously low budget. That said, the Saints and Soldiers series do an admirable job of creating realism with excellent props, especially when considering the low budget. The acting, for the most part is campy, preachy, and over the top. A few of the guys do fine jobs, but most could be much better.

But let's be honest, where this movie shines is in getting to watch two beautifully preserved M18 Hellcats and a Pz.III in action. Which brings up one minor gripe; In WWII, armored vehicles were nearly unrecognizable due to the amount of crap they had on them. From backpacks, to wooden ammo and ration crates, to tarps, to sandbag and log armor, etc. These vehicles looked like they just rumbled off the showroom floor.

But all in all, I gave it a 7. For WWII armor buffs, you won't find a better movie out there that features Buick's beautiful tank destroyer, which was well loved by it's crews. For those who like fast, light US armor, also check out The Bridge at Remagen, for some incredibly fun M24 Chaffee action.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Saints and Soldiers trilogy, these are low budget WW2 movies, set on the Western Front, the first was in late 1944, during The Battle of The Bulge, the second was set in the South of France during Operation Anvil and the 3rd, this one is set in 1945 in Germany and the plot isn't that much different from the bigger budgeted 'Fury' - A group of two American Hellcat Tank Destroyers are to scout an area known as 'The Void' (I can't find any reference to this area in history, but here the context is that its Indian country) meanwhile a group of troopers being transported by the Redball Express, driven by none other than Jesse Owens himself is ambushed by a squadron of dated German Mark III Panzers, an English Agent is in the group who make their escape - soon the Hellcats arrive and its a question of who can outsmart who in the skirmish that follows.

If you look through my other reviews you will see I like all kinds of movies but I am something of a WW2 buff and its always interesting to see these films, clearly made with love and care. Little here tries to put as much as he can in every shot to increase Production Value and it extra shots have been added to make the place feel more like Germany / Austria and less like Utah where it was filmed. For the most part this works, along with a heavy de- saturation of color in the edit suite, making you feel like the film is almost black and white and giving it the appropriate vintage feel. I recently also reviewed Allies and its easy to compare these two films, probably both having similar budgets and using resources from Tank Collectors and re-inactors. Allies is probably the superior of the two movies, but SAS - The Void is not without its great moments of action and tension. Some of the actors are good too but sadly this makes the weaker performances stand out all the more and these aren't helped by some very over stated dialogue. Little needs to team up with a good writer next time but also trust in his best actors to deliver more emotion with less words on some key scenes. Here and there dialogue is forced to explain things too much, but never the less what you have here is actually a great little film. Its well researched and feels bigger than it actually is, there is nice sense of scale and battle in the climax. Its biggest flaw is that its very hard to make a film shot in the States actually feel like Europe unless you can drop in some blue screen shots of European Towns or Villages (or Alternatively build one as they did in Fury) still with the obvious restraints of budget you have to commend Little's effort because it tries really hard with every shot to make the location feel European.

I think this is a great film, with good attention to detail that is let down by some aspects that were clearly beyond the control or means of the production financially but with stronger writing it could have been a stronger film still. Worth watching and I look forward to Little's next film War Pigs, which has some big names in the cast - he has earned his shot to make a bigger movie, that is for sure.

For a viewer with interests in WW2 and it's weaponry, this movie was not too bad. For anyone looking for another Saving Private Ryan, look elsewhere.

Both of the S and S movies have been fairly decent. The first was more dialog than action and this one leaned more toward the action. At least until it became kind of preachy about racial harmony, etc... The part I liked best about this series is the accuracy of the era the creators have, well, created. All of the vehicles and weapons are period accurate. They did a great job with the props. The 'cats' (how many times did the actors say Hellcat in this movie?) were awesome and the fact that they seemed to have gotten an early model Panzer Type 3 is really cool. What I did not like was when the movie became a lesson for potential WW2 hobbyists. All the talk about the M18 caliber and ammo types got a little bit educational when people just want to see it shoot. Also, the panzerfaust would easily cut through the armor of a Panzer 3 from pretty much any angle. So, for a movie that seems to pride themselves on accurate depictions that wars weaponry, the shot with the panzerfaust was a bit of a stretch. Still, I am a huge WW2 buff and gave the movie a 7.