Iron Cross: The Road to Normandy

Making a war movie isn't an easy feat. I have to acknowledge the work that went into this, but it's unfortunately wasted due mostly to bad editing and (yikes) English with German accents like Hogan's Heros. But there's also the bad acting, annoying music and many mistakes, including endless, meaningless shooting during which there's no apparent urgency; some soldiers aren't even ducking. I didn't make it to the end, but this movie definitely isn't your best choice and offers nothing new that I can see.

As some sort of cross between Cross of Iron at the beginning and The Longest Day at the end, it didn't really measure up to either. The acting and the action really didn't come up to much, the CGI explosions were awful and, a bit of anorak on my part, the German MG-42 machine guns were firing at a rate of about 500rpm where in real life they fired at closer to 1,500 which made them sound more like velcro being ripped apart. On the plus side, to give it three stars rather than two, the vehicles were pretty accurate which is quite unusual for a film of this sort and it was great to see a genuine 88mm gun being set up on the cliff. It would be interesting to know where all the gear came from.

I like war movies and I'm very lenient, but this one is just too terrible. Reverse angle on the filing, and the numbers are backwards... Bad acting... obvious he actors never fired a gun before... bad special effects...

I tried... I tried really hard, but I only lasted 10 minutes before I gave up on this one.

Another WW2 film that takes footage from a fairly impressive large scale re-enactment and attempts to edit it into a film. Yes, there are a bunch of these littered around streaming services. This one is pretty much par for the course; you have a sort of boring, poorly acted story crafted around fairly elaborate staged battle scenes.

On one hand a lot of effort was definitely put in by the re-enactors. There are lots of actual WW2 vehicles and equipment on display, which is actually pretty neat. Unfortunately this is supposed to be a film and none of it really 'feels' real. The soldiers often move sort of clumsily, uniforms are pristine clean, and the editing often makes things something of a mishmashes mess. It really is sort of uncanny watching a scene where some elements look convincing and then you have someone fall down in what can be best described as real time slow motion. There is also a combination of fairly impressive re-enactment pyrotechnics combined with some far less convincing after effects style ones. Technically it is really all over the place. Besides the confused editing at times, you can watch a 2 minute scene of this film with color grading that is different in almost every shot. It is all very jarring.

My relative is a re-enactor and I can understand the thought process. We look like WW2 soldiers (basically act as them) and have all this equipment, how hard can making a film be. Sort of ignoring the fact that writing a convincing script let alone convincingly performing it are what actually constitutes a convincing movie. I can respect the effort put into the battle scenes on a sort of technical level. They are at least from a scale/equipment perspective something. Unfortunately some re-enactment footage alone does not a good film make. Really, when you see that the lead actor is also the producer, director, etc. It becomes quite clear. One fairly amateur auteur is spread way too thin on his passion project. Unless you want to watch a bunch of re-enactors live out their own little WW2 German war scenario for almost 2 hours, you can do much better. This would have been MUCH better served as a short film that was tightly edited. Land that before attempting a feature film.

I rarely write reviews but felt compelled to here. The film obviously had quite a good budget, given the amount of original (mostly) tanks, artillery and weapons shown and whilst it tried very hard to be realistic it failed in the basics. The first 40 minutes or so was a mainly non-stop battle scene where the heroic Germans had been pinned down and surrounded for some time, yet, everything was pristine. No rust on the barb wire, posts freshly cut, everyones uniform was spotless, most laughable the medical officer who wore red cross bib and armband that were immaculately white. Same thing when the action swaps to Normandy. I'm not being over picky here but as ex-forces I know that after 10 days of simulation we looked like tramps. This cleanliness took away for me any resemblance of reality and I feel a good chance to make a good film was wasted here. Also, terrible acting, bad sound, tedious music, awful effects and no real plot.