World War I, or The Great War, is often overlooked and people usually go straight for the sequel World War II. Well WWI was pretty nasty and this picture shows that in spades.
This group of young teens decides to enlist when the war breaks out thinking it’ll be glorious and awesome to kick some ass. You know, the old let’s-show-‘em-who’s-boss attitude. But when these guys get to the front line they realize very quickly that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be sorta like The Deer Hunter. They witness their friends getting killed, have to put with a constant barrage of noise from gunfire and bombs and they seem to be starving most of the time because food is extremely scarce.
The battle scenes are horrific and probably the nastiest I’ve seen since the D-Day scene in Saving Private Ryan. We’re talking 1930 here too so it made it even more shocking. We see hundreds of men just getting slaughtered and the chaos that accompanies a charging advance in an attempt to gain some ground. Probably the most dreadful image is of one guy’s hands that are still clenched to a piece of barbed wire while the rest of his body has been blown away.
It’s a helluva anti-war statement and a really great gritty film. Oh and one little thing I left out is that this is from a German’s point of view. It’s an American film but it doesn’t matter which side they show, the point is that war is terrible and people are getting fucked up on both sides. The German soldiers don’t know why they’re really there and I would imagine most people from all countries fighting in those trenches didn’t either. It was just something that their country told them to do so they did it.
This is without a doubt one of the best war films I’ve ever seen. It’s not afraid to pull punches and show how fucking awful it is.
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