ecadvocate

This felt like the amalgamation of every Warners movie from 1940 to 1950 complete with the Joan Crawford wannabe lead imitating Joan's look and persona from Flamingo Road, the kids were recycled from Mildred Pierce, the black guy friend from Casablanca, the music from Humoresque, Garfield's wife was basically Garfield's mother in Humoresque, the plot from various Bogart films, everything was so formulaic and cliche. Just watch the originals, not this mishmash filler. The only interesting, daring, bold element was the white girls touching the little black boy and the focused ending shot on the boy for a sad reason at the end. At least this movie cared to break the racial rules even if it failed to not obey all the other ones.

This movie is not great. It's good, and it's only ok if you've already seen The Train 1964. This 1946 movie is artistic, stark, neo realist, blah blah, like many post war European made movies from the era. But it lacks character study and has only tactical measures and rebelliousness against not-so-evil Nazis as the reason for being, unlike The Train.

Army of Shadows 1969 is another example of a refined, not-so-purist remake of previous movies. It was just done better and had a longer lasting impact, like The Train.

But telling fans of La Bataille Du Rail that it's overrated just gets a lot of dislikes. Examine both movies yourself, but make sure you watch the 1946 movie FIRST so you won't be disappointed.

People in 2016 reviewed this negatively because there were no famous insane bay area tech billionaires with any power to do such a thing as what took place in the movie. And there was no covid 19 pandemic.

Watch this movie again today and the hook sinks deeper because it COULD happen today. Some people think it IS happening today or WILL happen.

I thought this movie was better than Da Vinci Code.