No. 360 : Where Eskimos Live (2002)

 

Where Eskimos Live at the IMDb

I picked this DVD up in a charity shop having never heard of it before. Well, its name starts with a ‘W’ so it must be decent! It does hold a reasonable 6.7/10 on IMDb, but I felt that was high and I’d be around half marks, if I was feeling generous.

Bob Hoskins stars as Sharkey, a tough as nails child trafficker who sports the worst accent since Sean Connery’s Egyptian in ‘Highlander’. The DVD box says Sharkey is English, but he has an Eastern European twang for some reason. I wonder if he was dubbed in post, as he doesn’t sound like the Bob we know and love.

Anyway, Sharkey has a fake UNICEF badge and backpack and is floating around Bosnia in 1995 looking to pick up some children. His motives aren’t immediately clear, but we know he has false credentials and is clearly up to something nefarious. It turns out it’s adoptions he’s facilitating but I think the subtext is far more noncey. He is pretty rubbish at his job, getting his papers and stuff taken off him on a regular basis. There is an air of lawlessness due to the war and  Sharkey is frankly underprepared.

He encounters Vlado who is part of a gang of orphans straight out of ‘Oliver Twist’. We know he’s a good guy as he befriends a Downs kid that the others shun. They have almost nothing, but they do have a nice light up globe on which Vlado points out Norway to his friend. ‘That’s where eskimos live’- he says. He may be nice but don’t have him as your phone a friend on ‘Millionaire’!

Vlado’s gang blow up a truck that contains a local Colonel’s daughter. He is rightfully pissed at this and vows to hunt down Bob and Vlado who have now joined forces. This minor peril is quickly dealt with, and the pair bond as they travel across the war-ravaged land with Bob getting some action along the way in a frankly strange sex scene.

The two eventually make it to Germany where Vlado is to be handed over to the gang leaders for a potential organ harvest. Will Bob take the money and walk away? What do you think?!

This was a decent effort, but the multi-nation production showed through, with a lot of dodgy accents and performances. The central relationship was poor with the kid playing Vlado being far too ‘stage school’ for my liking. There were scenes where he was screaming in delight and mugging away as Bob took polaroids that were just awful.

Bob didn’t convince either as a latter-day child catcher and his Road to Damascus style conversion didn’t ring true. He did give it his all however, especially by wearing a comedy style neck brace at the end, after he was beaten up with a trash can.

The story was pretty sleight too and I thought that the film must have been based on a true story, but no, this really was the best the scriptwriters could come up with.

To its credit the film did address some serious issues and the brutality and horrors of war, such as a big pile of corpses, was well done. Overall, the film lacked any tension or peril for me, with the cute kid and grumpy Bob not convincing to any degree, apart as a couple of actors cutting a pay cheque.

Not one that will live long in the memory and one that you will be able to find in my local charity shop sometime soon!

Best Bit - Bob's Full Bed

'W' Rating 10/23

No.342 : Wicked Spring (2002)

 Wicked Spring at the IMDb

The American Civil War lasted for about four years - this film felt slightly longer.

We open in 1861 with a long and meandering introduction to our characters. It is the golden time before the war, and we are treated to bucolic scenes of the harvest and people courting. We know it can’t last and are eventually transported to a battle in 1863 where the Blues and the Greys are facing off, in a small scale battle, in some woods.

The battle scene is the highlight of the film but it does highlight the small budget that is in play, with the 20 odd soldiers, who comprise each army, struggling to make the scene look epic. It looks daft that they are all crammed together to try and show scale as it’s clear that they would have fought better by spreading out a bit.

The battle isn’t well choreographed with at times it being unclear who is shooting who. This may be deliberate to show the horrors of war, but for me it just looked a bit unfocused and messy. There were several kills with the actors being shown to be hit many times from different angles in slow motion. This was a strange choice by the director as it took you out of the moment and made the thing look like a rap video.

With one side routed the soldiers flee into the woods and are detached from their units. Our main hero, Harrison, is with another soldier and they meet up with four others and set up a camp. Over an never-ending night the men share stories and food and we learn that Harrison hasn’t read any of the letters he received from his sweetheart, as he doesn’t read too good and that.

His new friend reads all his letters for him and sadly there’s no juicy stuff. There is however plenty of violin music accompanying the endless letter reading so we have that at least. I was expecting a bit more during this section to be honest, but maybe I just missed what was happening in the dark. “I can’t see a damn thing!“ someone exclaims at one point - I hear you brother, but obviously I can’t see you.

The next morning Harrison is awoken by a kick to the ribs. The nasty one with the medical background has discovered that the soldiers are from different sides and decides to take those from his enemy prisoner, so that he can return to his lines without being branded a deserter. A great plan, but one that quickly flounders as the upper hand switches back and forth between the two sides.

Who will win the day? And will the night of bonding help heal the schism between the two groups and across America as a whole? Probably not, as the battle is still raging and those extras seem keen to get home…

This was an awful film that looked like some Civil War re-enactor’s pet project that somehow found its way onto Amazon Prime. Fair enough it was based on a true incident, but one thing this effort will teach you is that not all true events are deserving of being recreated. There probably was a decent story in here to be fair, but the execution was just plain awful.

I was expecting some great revelation or horror, but in the end it was the old 'futility of war' message rote large for no entertainment or learning benefit whatsoever.

It didn’t look like there was a profession actor on show at all, which is fair enough as they also dispensed with a writer, editor and director too! Some scenes rambled on forever with the fireside letter reading section taking up an inordinate amount of the film for zero benefit whatsoever. You may say it built up Harrison’s character but alas there was none to begin with and all this added was that he couldn’t read.

The attempts at healing the divides were ham-fisted as was the conclusion which basically shouted ‘That’s the budget done, bring back the re-enacting guys’. Overall this was a painful watch and it’s just a pity Lincoln isn’t about to free this guff from my consciousness.

Best Bit : Opening Battle Scenes - ‘W’ Rating  : 8/23

No.273 : War Machine (2017)

War Machine at the IMDb

If you pump ‘War Machine’ into Google Images the first hits are all for the Iron Man War Machine armour. This isn’t that. And that’s a pity as it would doubtlessly be more fun than this Brad Pitt vehicle. The film isn’t bad as such, just a bit preachy and it doesn’t really go anywhere.

Pitt plays fictitious general Glen McMahon who has been put in charge of the long running Afghan war. Not being too well schooled on the subject I thought this was a bio-pic but it looks like they made a guy up so the real guy couldn’t object.  Given they had gone to the effort to create a character it’s strange they went with one who didn’t do much or have much of a personality, apart from swearing and twitching a lot.

We meet Glen as he takes office and we are introduced to his local inner circle of troops and specialists. He thinks the war in Afghanistan can be won despite the many obstacles in his path not least political indifference and a not fit for purpose U.N. mandate.

Things start out positively but soon grind to a halt when President Obama avoids Glen’s bids for ‘face time’ and the troops of other nations are less keen to get on board. To mix things up Glen leaks his own report of how things could be done better and agrees to be shadowed by a reporter from ‘Rolling Stone’ who wants to profile him.

Glens plan to get more troops in the field to win the war gets a lukewarm reaction and he has to head to Europe to secure more support from his allies there. Can the war be won or will Glen’s dreams of victory and his own place in history be scuppered by some loose lips and Tilda Swinton doing a dodgy German accent?

This was a decent effort but it really wasn’t worth the two hours that I invested in it. Pitt is adequate but his heavy accent is distracting and it wanders all over the film. His character’s motivations aren’t clear and although he is portrayed as good man with the well being of his troops at his heart he also comes across as rash and gung ho.

Obama, who is only seen fleetingly, and Washington lackey Alan Ruck are seen as nay saying liberals but at the end of the day they are shown to be correct with Glen showing serious a lack of judgement on several fronts. If this was a bio-pic it could be forgiven for showing reality, but as it was in part a work of fiction you‘d have thought they would have made the character more defined.

They did juxtapose Glen’s political manoeuvring with scenes of the troops of the ground facing the hazards of dealing with an insurgent force. I wasn’t convinced by the troops’ gun drills or tactics and for the most part they looked liked actors playing dress up, which they were. The pivotal action that saw some dead civilians was decently done but with too much hand wringing at the end.

I guess part of the character they were showing was that whilst having strong convictions Glen didn’t have the strength to see them through. His dreams of being on the cover of ‘Rolling Stone’ betrayed his vanity and became his eventual undoing. As it was, Tilda’s character profile was correct and Glen was left on the lecture circuit with his work turned over to Russell Crowe to complete, or at least drag out a bit further.

On the whole was unsatisfying and uneven - basically he came, he saw, and that’s about it.

THE Tag Line - War Machine - What is it good for? About 6/10. 14/23



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No. 260 : War Dogs (2016)

War Dogs at the IMDb

We all remember how dire ‘War Pigs’ was, but what about the canine variety of war film?

This one isn’t about the war itself or fighting in general but is more about the arms dealers who occupy the morally dubious role of gun runner and weapons provider to the highest bidder.

The film opens with the familiar premise of the lead character having a bad day. His voice over does the predictable thing of saying ‘I’m getting ahead of myself’ before we dissolve into the past where things start off.

Our hero is David (Miles Teller) who is making a few bucks as a Miami masseuse. He gets come ones from his elderly male clients and has a failing sideline of selling Egyptian cotton sheets to old folks’ homes. If he’d invested in rubber ones he’d have had more success. At a funeral he meets up with Efraim (Jonah Hill) who seems to be doing better - at the buffet table at least.

Efraim has a lucrative business finding the ‘crumbs’ on a government procurement website and supplying the goods to the army. They do OK for a while but David keeps his activities secret from his annoying wife as she is against the war in Iraq - we are in the 90’s after all. He wife is so annoying she takes the huff when she finds big bricks of cash in the bathroom - I’d have given him a big kiss!

Things take an upturn when a deal for Italian pistols comes their way and, despite having to deliver them in person, the success of the deal opens new doors for them. Soon they are in Vegas and a seemingly chance meeting with Bradley Cooper’s blacklisted arms dealer sets them up for a deal of a lifetime. The crumbs are forgotten as a $300 million banquet hoves into view. As you’d expect locating and delivering 100 million AK47 bullets is no small task, and soon the lads are falling out and dodging lots of shady characters in 90’s tracksuits.

Will they survive to tell the tale? The voiceover suggests yes!

This was a pretty decent film with a good cast and production values. Romania ghosted as Albania and it looked suitably bleak. The scenes in Iraq were well done and there was a bit of peril as they tried to escape those guys in a van out of ‘Back to the Future’.

There was an ongoing reference to the film ‘Scarface’ down to even the poster which seems a bit insensitive as actor Miles Teller has several facial scars from a real life car crash - still, do what you know I guess.

The three acts of the film were rote large with the success moment lasting about two minutes before the usual twin beasts of greed and paranoia taking over. It seemed such a waste but you do have to remind yourself that these are terrible people.

Jonah Hill was a lot like his persona from ’This Is the End’ and you knew he wasn’t to be trusted from the start. Teller’s every-man David was supposed to elicit our sympathy but between his naivety and annoying wife he failed to get a smidgen from me.

The file was directed by Todd Phillips from the Hangover films and this one was short of laughs, although reasonably engaging. He and Cooper co-produced so that gained the film a couple of scenes of Cooper going through the motions in a pair of glasses that magnified his eyes to a distracting level.

The film boasts a great soundtrack with several rock classics keeping things moving along - and then Leonard Cohen at the end!

It was a decent ride and seemed shorter than it’s near two-hour running time. I don’t think I learned much and the write ups I’ve read suggest the ‘based on a true’ story caption should be taken loosely at best. Still an enjoyable watch and free on Amazon Prime as I write.


Best Bit : No we're not waiting for your free glass token at the garage.
‘W’ Rating 17/23

No.253 : Waterfront (1944)

Waterfront at the IMDb

Here’s a bit of an oddity - a 1944 American film that barely scrapes past an hour and is essentially a propaganda film. Still, we’re a broad church at the ‘W’ Movie Blog so let’s have a look.

The film opens as a man is being wrestled down at the docks after dark. No, not like that. Some passing drunks alert the cops but the man denies he’s been molested despite the drunks’ protestations. It turns out he’s the local optician and after getting in a predictable ‘they should get their eyes tested’ line he’s sent on his way.

It quickly transpires however that he was indeed robbed and the reason he couldn’t tell the policeman is that he’s a Nazi spy and all that was taken was his code book. Soon he’s joined by Marlow (John Carradine) who is also a Nazi agent keen to get his orders deciphered - a task rendered impossible by the loss of the code book. The two plan to shake down some local suspects but not before Carradine has scored himself some lodgings a guest house, having threatened the landlady’s family with a concentration camp back in the homeland.

The landlady’s daughter is stepping out with a young insurance agent who is near a life changing deal and he works for a German American who runs the insurance company - keeping up? Carradine doesn’t believe that the code book theft was a random robbery and he’s proven correct when the thief makes contact seeking $5000 for its return. The remainder of the film is taken up with cross and double cross as the code book remains elusive. Will it be recovered and will the nest of spies be rounded up?

As an oddity this film was OK but it lacked any credibility or tension. There was never any doubt that the spies were going to get caught and the method to make it so was somewhat drawn out and convoluted. There was plenty to aid the war effort not least the German American writing a confession to the FBI so that others wouldn’t make the same mistakes he did.

Carradine was always watchable but as a spy he was rubbish - no one notice the foreign chap with the large floppy hat down the docks then? Did his excessive tips not draw attention or his subtle plan of buying editions of every newspaper before throwing them away in frustration in front of the news vendor seem unusual?

He was quite brutal with three enemies dispatched in the same way - his Mauser raised (note : don’t use a German gun for your murders!) and fired while the victim died off camera - ‘Reservoir Dogs’ this was not.

Despite being just over an hour the film managed to tack on an unnecessary romantic subplot which added nothing apart from some wholesome values for the folks back home.

I wouldn’t go and seek this one out but if it shows up on TCM or somewhere, it will pass an hour without too many demands being made of you.

Best Bit : Why are you hanging about the docks?
‘W’ Rating 12/23

No.247 : War Pigs (2015)

War Pigs at the IMDb

It’s very easy to slag off a straight to DVD film starring a bunch of Z-list actors…so let’s do that then!

The film is a bit of an ‘Inglorious Basterds’ rip off with a rag tag group of WW2 soldiers sent on a dangerous mission behind enemy lines. Here the similarities end however as instead of Brad Pitt and Chrisoph Waltz you get a blink and you’ll miss him appearance from Mickey Rourke and Luke Goss out of ‘Bros’ in the lead. What they didn’t spend on acting talent they also didn’t spend on sets or locations with sunny America standing in for what should be a mud splattered and freezing Europe.

The film opens with Captain Luke leading his troops on a patrol. Bad judgement or intelligence leads him into a nest of Germans and everyone gets killed apart from our hero. He is carpeted by his C/O, a ridiculous looking Mickey Rourke, whose ‘eccentric Major’ doesn’t disguise the fact that he must be the only officer on the Western Front with extensive plastic surgery and a cowboy hat. He delivers his lines in his celebrated slurry fashion and tells Luke that he’s up for a court martial unless he can lead a mission into enemy territory.

Luke may be torn up at the loss of his men, or because he’s read the rest of the script, but he agrees to the mission with the promise that his court martial will go away if he makes it back. We get the idea that Mickey may have another agenda and is being all enigmatic so imagine the disappointment at the end when we learn he totally doesn’t and is just (badly) acting that way.

Luke heads off to meet his new unit the notorious ‘War Pigs’. These are the toughest troops in the army and earned their name by, er, getting down in the dirt. Again I thought this was going to be a big reveal near the end but that’s really how they came by their name. The troops are meant to be your usual bunch of misfits but they all came across as really dull. Except maybe for Dolph Lundgren who shows up as a French Foreign Legion solider who is assigned to the unit for reasons unknown.

After a long padding sequence where the guys are put through extensive training (don’t they know there’s a war on?!) they get their orders - to investigate reports of a giant German artillery gun 10 miles behind enemy lines. That doesn’t seem very far especially at this stage of the war and given they have pissed away weeks in training, but never mind, this climax will be great!

The War Pigs show their greatness by mostly getting captured right away and it’s down to Luke to save the captured troops, find the gun and squeeze out a tear before the all too welcome end credits.

I quite enjoyed this terrible film, as a guilty pleasure you understand. It failed on almost every level with no characters to speak of, very little peril and dialogue that will make you cringe. Luke is a horrible actor and didn’t convince one iota as the troubled captain. He seems a nice enough bloke but saying ‘Soldier’ in every sentence doesn’t convey authority nor did he seem believable as an action hero taking down three Jerries in a fist fight.

He was better than Rourke however, who gets a laughable front and centre slot on the poster for his five minute’s work. His Frankenstein face and white cowboy hat made him look ridiculous and he conveyed all the menace of Sylvester Stallone’s mother.

The baddies were very poor too, with the one who was charged with the predictable old Gestapo torturer role as scary as a My Little Pony. The big threat of the super gun (it’s only a model) was nothing of the kind and dispatched with such ease you wonder why they didn’t issue our guys with pea-shooters instead.

The climax, which included a seemingly heroic death for Lundgren reversed, suggested a sequel could be possible - dear God no! I’d rather fight the Germans myself!

Best Bit - Luke goes Mano-a-mano-a-mano-a-mano.
‘W’ Rating 6/23

No.243 : World War Dead : The Rise of the Fallen (2015)

World War Dead : The Rise of the Fallen at the IMDb

Towards the end of this British ‘found footage’ horror one of the soon to be scoffed characters does an earnest piece to camera. “This is the craziest shit I’ve ever experienced” he says. Well, he’s half right - it certainly was shit!

Of course, with a title like this one you can’t expect much and it certainly delivers nothing at all, except for a series of predictable jerky encounters with some out of focus and anachronistic solder zombies.

Still I’m getting ahead of myself - let’s do the plot - that should cover a sentence! The film opens with some captions and stock footage about the Battle of the Somme - neat way to pad the already skinny 75 minute run time. We learn that a distinguished documentary film maker (who seemingly works out of a Transit van with a bunch of amateurs) has gone missing and what follows is cut from footage that was later found. So far so very predictable.

The characters have none to speak of and they all bitch about each other and argue pointlessly to either build up the tension or to disguise the fact that there is no script and that the zombie extras have only been paid for 20 minutes. The shoot is interrupted when mysterious figures appear in the background and a ‘French’ passer-by advises that it is ‘tres dangerous’ to be in the area.

There are plenty of false starts before the expert starts pulling on a chain that was next to a lake. This reveals a skeleton which belongs to a soldier from an African regiment who practiced bringing the dead back to life. He has a handy amulet in his stomach which the expert pockets, oblivious to its deadly powers! In no time flat the crew is besieged by resurrected soldiers from the Somme battlefield who strangely seem to be wearing World War 2 uniforms. They also have a taste for flesh which is unexplained apart from that’s what zombies do, I guess.

Some of the cast get chomped and another lot find an abandoned, but curiously well stocked, bunker and plot their salvation. Some handy 100 year old dynamite may help their fight and if they can rebury the skeleton (which wasn’t buried in the first place), maybe the dead will rest again. Can’t fault logic like that!

This was a shocker of a film and in no way is that a compliment. For starters I’ll bet the whole thing was filmed in England with one stuck on number plate and a dreadful ‘local’ the only nods to the actual location of the Somme battlefield. To be fair there is no way rubbish like this would get permission to film there, and if that’s the case you have to wonder about the inclusion of old footage of real and dead soldiers from the time. Regular readers will know PC isn’t my thing but real dead soldiers being used to set the scene for this tosh was plain disrespectful.

The acting was ghastly, as was the script which I don’t doubt was improvised throughout. The jerky cameras were vomit inducing and the added crackles and interference offered only annoyance, not authenticity. Very little was done in the was of explaining the zombies’ motivation or the fact that after 100 years the only decay they exhibited was that pasty face make up that students do at Halloween.

The only scares were of the usual ‘jump out’ variety allied to a screech on the soundtrack which wore thin the first time, never mind the fifth.

OK it’s hokey garbage with no pretense at great art or even competent movie making, but this was an embarrassment to all concerned not to mention an affront to common decency in general.

Best Bit - Head gets pulled off
‘W’ Rating 3/23

No.241 : When Trumpets Fade (1998)

When Trumpets Fade at the IMDb

‘TV Movie’ is often a solid pointer to the quality you can expect from a film but this HBO production was impressive in terms of its cast, scale and effects.

The film is book-ended with scenes of soldiers carrying an injured comrade from the battle field. In between the horrors of the Hurtgen Forest campaign are explored through the eyes of Manning, played by Ron Eldard - he was the nice one in ‘Drop Dead Fred’.

Manning is a lowly private who cares only for surviving the war. His platoon has been decimated and he is carrying his fallen comrade Jeffrey Donovan (Burn Notice) on his back. We know it’s a pointless gesture as Donovan has what looks like a pink jellyfish stuck on the side of his head and soon Manning has to make a terrible choice.

Back at base his commanders recognize his battlefield skills - basically staying alive - and promote him to Sergeant in charge of a group of new recruits. Manning drills them mercilessly hoping to keep both them and himself alive. Things come to a head when he is charged with capturing a bridge with the promise of a medical discharge if he’s successful. Will he win his discharge at any cost and will a battlefield promise hold any weight anyway?

I wasn’t expecting much from this 90 minute TV movie but it delivered on almost all fronts. There were a lot of familiar clichés and some sections were virtual retreads of the episode of ‘Band of Brothers’ that covered the same engagement. Of course if you have a flamethrower it has to explode and there were a couple of inventive scenes such as the walk through the mine field which kept things interesting.

The cast was excellent although some big named players such as Timothy Olyphant were in virtual ‘blink and you’ll miss them’ roles. It was also a waste to have Bobby Carnivale in the cast and have him as an officer’s assistant rather than some murderous gung-go maverick that we know he does so well.

Ron Eldard was OK in the lead but I wasn’t totally buying his fragile mental state and his self preservation bit was incongruous with his actions when helping out his platoon. I guess he’s a mixed up character but it’s hard to pull for someone when you don’t know where their motivations lie.

For a TV film there is a fuck load of swearing and some of the deaths and dismemberments were up there on the ‘Private Ryan’ scale of gory. The battle scenes were well executed with a well drilled cast of dozens doing well in a fantastically realised battlefield full of debris and body parts.

I don’t think the film had an awful lot new to say about the horrors of war, and as a character study it was lacking too, but overall this was an enjoyable spectacle and well worth a look.

Best Bit : Bridge Offensive
‘W’ Rating 17/23

No.195 : White Feather (1955)

White Feather at the IMDb

 ‘Number 2’ Robert Wagner stars in this 1955 western which, as far as I can gather, isn’t related to the Marillion song of the same name.

Wagner does a bit of pre-credit narration in which he tells us that this is a true story, but the Indians speak English so we can understand them. Thanks for making us feel stupid from the off Number 2!

Wagner plays Josh Tanner, a young surveyor looking to plan some towns in gold rich Indian country. He finds the body of a prospector with an arrow in his back and after pocketing his gold he heads to the army fort. He does a bit of exposition for the Commander and hands over the gold so we know he’s a solid fella. He heads to the store to get a room (and he treats us like we’re thick!) just in time to hear the racist storekeeper give it to some Indians. The bigot sends our man to the back room whereupon our hero meets the sexy daughter fresh out of the bath - a whole shoulder is on display!

We learn that tensions are running high with the Indians, with some ready to sign a treaty but others, notably the Cheyenne, refusing to lay down before their masters - the dogs! Wagner takes a laissez faire approach and on a date with the store keeper’s daughter impresses the Cheyenne Chief’s headstong son with his diplomacy and comb. He’s so impressed that next day he delivers a nice squaw for him - that must have been some nice comb!

He take his new date back to the camp and is worried to note the Indians are practicing shooting on some dummies made up like soldiers - this can’t end well! Wagner tries to chum up with the Indians by giving them knives but all he gets in return is a hot horse that spells trouble with the neighbouring tribes from whom it was stolen. Meanwhile the old Chief has decided to smoke um peace pipe to the chagrin of his hot headed son.

As things get hot on the diplomatic front so do they also in Wagner’s storeroom bed as the squaw sets up home - but isn’t she promised to the warrior, American Horse? Can the battles in love and war be settled so that we can all live nicely together and open casinos?

Once again the ‘W’ movie quest produces a western and quite a po-faced one at that. Normally we get a bit of action and a few drunken laughs but here it’s all business. Wagner acts as a conduit between the two warring peoples and, to be fair, the film gives a balanced view, even highlighting the injustices faced by the natives. The familiar character of the hot headed son is used to bring in a bit of conflict but when he’s impressed by a comb you know he’s not going to be much of a threat.

The film looks impressive and is mostly shot on location. The characters are a bit thin and too clichéd and there’s not a lot to get invested in. Wagner is too non-committal and his lack focus brushes off on the viewer who gets to the stage where he’s lost interest about halfway through.

The love story seems tacked on and, although we get some naked back, it’s largely pointless especially as the spurned loved gets handed his ass in a low rent fist fight.

Overall the film is more worthy than it is watchable and I was looking for a white flag rather than a white feather 30 minutes before the credits.

Best Bit : Indian Takeaway Shows Up in the Store Room
‘W’ Rating : 10/23

No.188 : Waterloo Road (1945)

Waterloo Road at the IMDb

No, it’s not the BBC yoof soap, what we have here is the black and white 1945 war time kitchen sink drama.

It’s the time of the Blitz and local doctor Alistair Sim has a part time job book ending the film with his wise words and inner monologue. He buys a toy train for a young child and his mind wanders off as we drift into the film proper.

An East end family is making do with the lodger trying to get his breakfast as the family all squabble. The pretty but dim daughter is under fire as she’s walking out with local spiv Stewart Granger, despite being married to John Mills who’s off fighting the war. A busybody sister writes to Mills telling him about the slattern’s antics and soon the squaddie is AWOL and seeking to sort things out.

Mills has several adventures as he has to evade the military police and fate intervenes as she slips out of his hands on several occasions as she sees the town in the company of the spiv. Mills also enlists the help of a fellow deserter and uses his wiles and fighting skills to evade capture.

Eventually as the bombs start to fall the spiv gets the girl in his lair as Mills is tipped off by the doctor as to their whereabouts. Can he stop his girl giving up the goods to the douche layabout and will the toy train recipient be a surprise to anyone?

I really liked this brief slice of 1940’s life. There was certainly no attempt to glamorise our brave boys fighting the war as most we met were on the run or up to some illegal antics. I’m sure this was a tonic to the home front as the stiff upper lip was replaced by a cockney sparrow who was as quick with his fists as he was with his wits.

There were plenty of laughs and I liked the scene where the MPs raid the dance hall looking for deserters. Our hero heads for the toilet only to find a queue waiting to escape out of the window! The action all takes over the place of a day and you can’t say much was invested in the plot which was basically an hour of a manhunt before a ten minute punch up where the baddie gets his just desserts. The characters are great however with Stewart Granger doing well in the thankless role of the gadabout trying to deflower the lonely wife. John Mills is fine as the small but wiry squaddie and there are plenty of great characters showing up to raise a smile.

I was less impressed with the prick tease wife who seemed a bit wet to be getting all the frenetic attention she enjoyed. At the end things all got sorted out neatly and although the blitz scenes were mainly stock footage it didn’t detract from a good knockabout drama that had more laughs than most comedies.

Best Bit : Punch Up!
W Score 18/23

No.175 : Went the Day Well? (1942)

Went the Day Well? at the IMDb

Some proto ‘The Eagle Has Landed’  action now as we cast an eye over this 1942 World War 2 thriller. We open with a country yokel marvelling at a tombstone in an English village churchyard. The grave has German names and he assumes we are interested in how they came to be here. Of course we are, so we fade back to a time before the Jerries were planted.

The sleepy village is all excited when 60 soldiers appear with orders to be billeted in the area. There is great interest as they are parcelled out, especially by one old bint who sadly only gets one of the two men she applied for - well there is rationing on. We the viewer know they are in fact Nazi infiltrators who plan to set up some jamming equipment prior to a full blown invasion which is planned for a few days later.

At first the locals are happy to pitch in but soon suspicions are arisen when foreign chocolate and continental number sevens start to make their unwelcome presence known. The local toff is of course on the side of the bad guys and even when the cover is blown he still tries to thwart all attempts to raise the alarm.

The Germans manage to herd the townsfolk into the church and in a scene reminiscent of ‘Dad’s Army’ start to dish out the threats. Of course the English won’t be cowed and several attempts to break out of the blockaded village are spoiled by bad luck alone. Eventually the good word gets out and the battle is taken to the manor house - will the villagers save the day or will the Boshe lay down the rebelling townsfolk? Given this is an English film dating from 1942 I’ll let you have two guesses!

Although a virtual propaganda film there is a lot to like in this B&W drama, that has more of an edge than many films from the era. For a start the violence is pretty brutal with axes and the like used to dispatch the evil interlopers. It’s not all one way however, with every heroic kill matched by a tragic one perpetrated by the quietly evil Germans.

The cast are largely unknowns, apart from Thora Hird, but they do a good job as convincing townsfolk, slowly building the will to strike back at their Kraut captors. The plot was somewhat predictable but must have been ground-breaking at the time. How Jack Higgins managed to partially rewrite it as ‘The Eagle Has Landed’ suggests someone at the copyright office was asleep at their desk - even down to the churchyard scenes that bookend the film, the whole narrative of the later book is near intact.

You could argue that the characters are thinly drawn along the lines of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ but there is a war on and it was good to see the non-combatants stepping up to the plate to save the day. I did like the evil lord of the manor collaborator best, who managed to perpetrate greater and greater outrages in every scene he appeared. He was always going to get his comeuppance and it was all the more welcome for it being drawn out.

For a 1940’s film the body count for both the home and away side was massive with plenty of brutal dispatches to keep the scorers happy. I'm sure the message was one of ‘do your bit’ but I just hope many war time village cinemas didn't end up as slaughterhouses as everyone who looked a bit foreign was drowned in the popcorn machine!

The film, which is based on a Graham Greene short story, is a minor and ground breaking classic and well worth your time.

Best Bit - Lady Driver Suffers Egg On Face
W Score : 18/23

No.167 : War Witch (2012)

War Witch at the IMDb

The 100 ‘W’ movie blog makes a welcome return to celebrate the many, many ‘W’ films nominated for this year’s Academy awards. We’ll begin with ‘War Witch’ before moving to the lighter charms of ‘Wreck It Ralph’ and then … Well that’s it, but what a haul eh? We showed them ‘Z’ fans - ‘Zero dark Thirty’ and that’s their lot!

‘War Witch’ is nominated in the ‘Best Foreign Language Film’ category and I have to say that it’ll be a good film that beats it - not that I plan to trawl through the ‘W’ initial free Norwegian entry for one.

The film follows the terrible struggles of Komona who lives in a war torn, but unspecified African country. We open with the 14 year old in the late stages of a pregnancy and she relates the trials of her last two years to her unborn child.

We flashback to her as a 12 year old as rebels attack her village and seize several children, including Kamora, to fight their war. As a way of severing her ties with the village they make her machine gun her own parents. She is reluctant at first, but soon lets fly when the parents are threatened with torture. She does come round to the idea quite quickly though, and I have to wonder if the parents regret not getting her that iPad for Christmas.

The rebels soon have the kids trained with AK47s and have them lead raids against government troops. In one early battle Komora is warned of an ambush by some ghosts and is thereafter feted as a ‘war witch’, a rare prize to the superstitious guerrillas. Her new status sees her treatment improve and she soon makes a friend in Magician, a pale skinned lad who makes necklaces and charms that deflect bullets which patently don’t work.

After a brutal battle Magician and Komona escape their warlord boss and after finding the required white cockerel they are married and enjoy a brief period of happiness. Needless to say this is short-lived and before long Komora is back being all witchy and being abused by her commander. Will she be able to escape with only an avocado and a razor blade? Will she find peace and safety and be able to rest the spirits that haunt her? Let’s hope so - I need some cheering up after this!

Despite the grim subject matter and subtitles I really liked this film. It is brutal, but as most of the violence happens off screen it’s your own imagination that fills in the blanks, which is usually worse. The harrowing scenes are more or less relentless, with each chink of light mercilessly snatched away by a gun or machete.

I liked the ‘Sixth Sense’ notion of Komona being able to see dead people and although the corpses looked like they were just a bit sloppy at plastering, it was spooky to see the soldiers on a battlefield being replaced by so many ghosts.

The two leads were great with no obvious acting going on - the pain, grinding poverty and inhumanity was brutally realised and it was almost as big an ordeal to watch as they clearly had making it. There were some brief moments of levity such as them getting drunk on hallucinogenic tree resin but it was all ruined by an engineered car accident to get undeserved compensation - I’m reporting this to the ABI (or local equivalent).

For me this was a brutal and authentic slice of life, and although not enjoyable it certainly kept my interest and delivered a few choice cuts along the way. Ouch!

Best Bit : What do you like in your avacado?

'W' Rating 17/23

No. 149 : War Wolves (2009)

War Wolves at the IMDb

We’ve seen a few werewolf films recently here at the ‘W’ Movies Quest but none have been as bad as ‘War Wolves’. The first clue of its crappy quality is the (TV) after its title on the IMDb. This of course means it’s a television movie, or at least that’s where it premièred after all the distributors no doubt chose to pass. Frankly I’d agree and would say that passing water over this effort would be too praise it to highly.

The film opens with some soldiers having some R&R while abroad on duty. For no obvious reason we get a full five minutes of the touch football games which involves a strange unit that has both men and foxy chicks. Later while out on patrol the group is caught under fire and eventually decimated by some locals wearing toy store fangs.

We skip six months later and one of the survivors is working in a store. He keeps getting flashbacks to the wolf related incident and we’re pretty sure that he has been infected. Meanwhile the oldest two mercenaries in town are on the trail of three ladies who also exhibit symptoms of cheap transformation effects. Our man is met by another who gives him training in his new powers while the ladies are looking for him to join their group. When he’s cornered at a motel by the mercenaries he has to choose whether to stay or leave with the ladies in a ZZ Top style exit.

This is a strange film to categorise. Although it’s unintentionally funny it isn't a comedy but there isn't enough gore to merit calling it a horror. There is not enough characterisation to call it a drama and it’s certainly no adventure. Low budget crap fest would cover it, but sadly Blockbuster has yet to introduce that section.

The biggest laugh comes with the make up which is easily the worst I've ever seen. I know we have been accused of hyperbole before but trust me on this, you’ll never see anything poorer. Basically a ‘werewolf’ consists of 99p Dracula fangs and some green contact lenses. If you want full transformation add in some Spock ears and some boot polish for your nose. Once your actor is all dressed up have them arch their backs a bit and you're all set. It really is laughably awful and how the actors kept a straight face is beyond me.

The plot is all over the place too with an alcoholics anonymous storyline running parallel with the wolfie one. I think the director was trying to show how both curses can be damaging but are conquerable but it just came across as a load of preachy guff.

In mitigation you do get John Saxon for your money but he looks about 70 and daft as a mercenary. At one point some one throws him a shotgun and it looks like he’s about to fall over. The three female wolves are all very pretty but very shy, in a genre known for a bit of spice. No messy transformations for them of course just the occasional howl to disguise the crappy effects and hole filled script.

You’ll probably have trouble tracking this one down unless you find it on the Sci-fi Channel late at night, so just be grateful for that small mercy!

Best Bit : Hay loft tussle
‘W’ Rating : 1/23

No. 128 : Windtalkers (2002)

Windtalkers at the IMDb

Nicolas Cage stars in this factual World War Two drama directed by action supremeo John Woo. The film opens with a young Navajo Indian leaving his family in Arizona to enlist in the war effort. Meanwhile Cage’s division is having a hard time in the Solomon Islands with he the sole survivor. As he slowly rehabilitates back on base with the aid of a friendly nurse, the Indian goes through his training. A new unbreakable code has been developed using the Navajo language with these new ‘code talkers’ a prize asset for the Americans and target for the Japs.

Cage is charged with looking after his code talker and secretly told that he cannot allow his man to be taken alive. Cage has rushed his return to duty and has issues regarding the loss of his men. He is unhappy with his babysitting role and his relationship with his new charge gets off to a frosty start in a scene familiar to anyone who’s ever seen a cop movie. The guys are soon spearheading the assault on Japan with Cage’s damaged Sergeant enjoying the killing perhaps too much.

As you’d probably guess Cage’s distain for his charge starts to thaw when he sees the value and bravery of him in combat. His fellow babysitter Christian Slater meanwhile is getting on fine with his charge and they enjoy regular jam sessions on the mouth organ. The code talker plan comes under strain however when their base is attacked and Slater has to decide whether he can obey the order to kill his man rather than let the Japs capture him. Sadly Slater loses his head over the incident and Cage his mind as he has to make a deadly, and messy, choice.

As the conquest of the island of Taipei nears it’s conclusion the Japs wheel out the big guns and our men are caught under fire. Will the tensions between the men prevent them winning the day and can the anguished Cage find redemption?

This is an enjoyable film but doesn’t quite tick all the boxes needed to award it ‘classic’ status. The battle scenes are well handled and epic in their scale but some of the skirmishes have an overly choreographed look about them. The chaos of a murderous battle isn’t really conveyed when our man bashes a few Japs does a diving roll to shoot another before springing up to knife another. The violence isn’t of the gratuitous nature, well is you discount Slater’s head at any rate.

What annoyed me was the lack of focus on the code talker angle. The set up for the film makes you think this will save the day but sometimes our man just gets on the horn and yells for covering fire. Other time the elaborate code is used through various relays to give the coordinates of Jap positions - why bother with the code? - the Japs know where they are.

The main flaw of the film is the lack of invention and surprises. We know Cage is troubled and need to be redeemed, we know he has to shoot his man if he’s in danger and we know the native will have trouble with the red neck element of the unit. What follows are a series of predictable scenes where each of the set ups come off and are resolved as you’d imagine. I’m not saying they should have thrown in some aliens or anything but ultimately the journey from A to B to C could have been mixed up somewhat.

The decent supporting cast which includes Mark Ruffalo and the ever dependable Peter Stormare are all good in underwritten roles but I could have done without Slater’s nice guy who toots his mouthie before heading off.

Although I enjoyed the film it could have been so much better and it’s a pity that the code talking that the plot hangs on seemed to be included as an afterthought.

Best Bit : Big fight at the end
‘W’ Score 15/23

No. 124 : Waterloo (1970)

Waterloo at the IMDb

Here’s a real epic of a film that’s probably passed you by. I was surprised the film had never come up on my horizon given that it cost millions and had a top notch cast. I’m not alone however as the IMDb has less than 2,000 votes for a film that had a claim to be the most expensive ever made when it came out in 1970. We’ll get to the reasons for the film’s apparent anonymity later but first let’s do a quick plot summary.

Of course you’ve heard of The battle of Waterloo and quite possibly you’ve been through the battlefield if you’ve ever flown Ryanair to Brussels. I thought I had a good idea of what went on, but the film does a good job of illuminating a subject that may have been condensed down to ‘Wellington beat Napoleon’ in many people’s minds.

The film opens with Rod Steiger’s Napoleon in a hard place. His campaigns have ended in failure and his generals ask that he surrenders. We can hear his inner thoughts and eventually he agrees to sign the declaration and be exiled to Elba. Within a year however he escapes and returns to France with a thousand men and an ambition to reconquer Europe. Elsewhere the Duke of Wellington (Christopher Plummer) is enjoying the high life and entertaining Virginia McKellar.

Napoleon is met by a French army charged with returning him to Paris in a cage but they are quickly persuaded to join his quest by his shouty oration and shiny boots. As his army swells he becomes a threat to the British and Prussians and they resolve to beat his fledgling army before it becomes too great a threat. As the armies mass at Waterloo we get an insight into the tactics and inner thoughts of the battlefield commanders.

The last hour of the film deals almost exclusively with the battle and, although the result is a foregone conclusion if you ever picked up a history book, the closeness and viciousness of the confrontation immerse you in the battle and sways your loyalties throughout.

This film has some of the best battle scenes I‘ve seen with their scale and detail defying belief. Apparently the Russian military was roped in to provide the army as well as circus horse riders who earn their Roubles with some spectacular falls. The overhead shots show the marvellous scale of the battle with literally hundreds of horsemen attacking thousands of troops formed in battle squares. Even at a distance you can make out every smoking gun and falling rider and the number ‘that must have hurt’ moments are immeasurable.

What the film lacks however is a soul. As a battle re-enactment it is peerless but apart from that there isn’t too much happening. Wellington is pretty faceless with no reaction given when one General announces that his leg has been shot off. He is also close to Ian ‘The Saint’ Ogilvy but barely bats an eye when he gets blown up. The single female on show is hardly seen and for the most part this is a Boys’ Own adventure.

On the French side Rod Steiger does a good job with Napoleon, a part which must be hard to make your own. We don’t get much of a sense of his motivation and the charisma he’d have needed to lead thousands of men to their deaths is lacking. His tormented inner monologue gives us some sense of the man but for the most part you’re wondering how he got the job. For your money you also get a whale of an Orson Welles appearance but given he has two minutes of screen time I imagine his presence was more important on the poster than on the screen.

It is a good film and one I enjoyed but if the script had as much energy as the battle scenes this would be up there with the David Lean classics.

Best Bit : An hour of good honest bloodshed
‘W’ Rating 15/23

No. 102 : Waltz With Bashir (2008)

Waltz With Bashir at the IMDb

The great 100 ‘W’s list was so sadly neglected that I actually watched a ‘W’ film the other night without making the connection. How the mighty have fallen! In retrospect the fall from grace can be traced to the start of the quality TV schedule and as most of my shows are about to go on their summer hiatuses you can be assured of some reinvigorated ‘W’ action.

The rebirth begins in somewhat downbeat fashion with ‘Waltz With Bashir’ which I had been aware of but was slow to track down due to the grim subject matter and the basic animation seen in the trailers. Of course prejudging is never a good thing and I was pleasantly surprised with the film, which was nominated for the Best Foreign Picture Oscar (lost).

Waltz With Bashir is a drama documentary which sees a middle age man try to make sense of some lucid dreams and to patch up some holes in his memory relating to his time as a teenage soldier in the Israeli army. Although animated almost all the way through the film uses real people and their experiences, with their interviews shown in animated form with their names and positions captioned in both Hebrew and English.

The dreams our man suffers from lead back to his service in Lebanon which took place during the 1982 conflict. He slowly recalls being attacked and being the only survivor of his squad, managing to escape only after swimming out to sea and then back to his own lines. As he delves deeper he realises that he may have been involved in a massacre of hundreds of civilians and wonders if the horrors have been erased from his memory to preserve is sanity.

The film successfully treads the thin line between entertaining and preaching and despite some harrowing sequences there are some fun bits too, not least a hardcore porno featuring a well endowed plumber with a ‘big tool’. The soundtrack is great too with pop hits from the period by the likes of P.I.L and O.M.D. sitting snugly with some evocative classical music.

Despite my reservations I did enjoy the animation which defies it’s basic appearance with some clever 360 degree turns and snappy direction, especially during the titular sequence.

Although it’s not a film that you could say you enjoyed it is thought provoking and affecting. I wasn’t aware of this incident prior to seeing the film and it’s certainly brave of an Israeli film maker to focus on an event that doesn’t show his country men in their best light.

This is a film well worth looking up and if you think animation isn’t the best medium for analysing the evil that men do, a small section of news footage from the time is included at the end to show that the real horrors are far worse than anyone could imagine, let alone draw.

Best Bit : Plumber Comes To Visit
'W' Rating : 19/23

No.55 : Where Eagles Dare (1968)

Where Eagles Dare at the IMDb



‘Where Eagles Dare’ is an 1968 ‘men on a mission’ World War 2 movie staring Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood. It is regarded as a genre classic and its fans include Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino and me. The only dissenting voice I could find was Clive James who recently described it ‘the worst movie ever’, but what does he know? He’s got a stocking over his face for a start!

The film opens with a transport plane making a perilous journey through the Alps. Although the men on board are in German uniforms we know they’re the good guys because Clint is among their number. Their mission is one of rescue and is explained during a flashback sequence that introduced Michael Hordern of ‘Paddington the Bear’ fame as the Admiral in charge of the operation. We learn that an important American general has been shot down in enemy territory, and if he is not rescued plans for the second front will be lost.

We, the viewer, suspect things are not what they seem early on, as after the men make their parachute exit Mary Ure is ushered from a secret compartment and jumps a few moments later. On the ground the plan starts to unravel when the radio operator is found murdered. The team make it to a remote alpine lodge and after making his excuses Burton makes his secret rendezvous with Mary. The General, we learn, is being kept in the Sloss Adler, a remote castle base serviced only by cable car and seemingly impenetrable. Luckily Ingrid Pitt is on our side and manages to get Mary a job when she sweet talks horny Gestapo man Derren Nesbitt.

Fears of traitors in the ranks are quickly realised when another member of the team is killed and our men are captured by the Germans. Luckily the Nazis do a pretty poor job of escorting Clint and Burton to the jail and the pair manage to escape within five minutes. With the team now separated into two groups its up to the stars to break into the castle and rescue the General and their three comrades.

But no! Twists and schemes abound when the real traitors are revealed and the whole point of the mission is explained. With the castle aflame and the Jerries falling by the dozen can our happy crew escape back to England, and expose the conspiracy that reaches to the very highest echelons of M.I.6.?


I must have seen this film 20 times but rarely all the way through. It plays on a near constant loop on TCM and I usually get hooked in again when I flick past the cable car or school bus scenes. What a complete viewing allows is the chance to appreciate how well crafted the film is, with plot points seeded throughout that are harvested in the thrilling climax.

In some scenes the viewer is in on the plan with reveals such as Mary exiting the plane and the paratrooper being murdered rather than accidentally killed as the dialogue suggests. In others we are kept in the dark, such as the tavern scene where Burton is about to explain things to Eastwood and the camera tantalisingly drifts away to another part of the bar. Techniques like these keep us guessing and allow us a sense of involvement as well. This juggling act is well handled and not one of the later revelations seems improbable given what has happened before.

The action sequences are excellent with more Germans killed and more explosions per square inch than any other film I know. Some of the rear projection work is a bit ropey, especially on the cable car scenes, but you hardly notice amid the brutal fighting and face kicking. The cable car sequence is perhaps the best remembered and it certainly features prominently on the film’s poster, but for me the chase in the school bus is best with all the earlier planning paying off in tree-mendous fashion.

Clint does his usual good job as an action star but how the Jerries don’t twig his accent I’ll never know. Burton is great running the show and he just passes in the action stakes too. Barely 10 years later in ‘The Wild Geese’ he looks daft running about with his Uzi, but here he pulls it off - just. Of the second stringers who can fail to remember Derren Nesbitt’s nasty, horny Gestapo man? His earlier fall out with the General serves our guys well in the dining room showdown and he’s exceptional in the regard that he’s the only German with an IQ of more than 30. His successful reading of Mary nearly saves the day for the bad guys but sadly it’s not to be as she bursts in to ruin his night.

The script by Alistair MacLean is top notch and despite running for a hefty 155 minutes there isn’t a wasted moment or superfluous scene. The action is invariably described as ‘Boys’ Own’ and you can see why, when the good guy losses total Burton’s scratched hand against 500 Germans and a castle. No one claimed it was a documentary though!

If you are one of the four people who like war films but haven’t seen this masterpiece I trust you will rectify the situation immediately. Look it’s about to start on TCM right now! For the rest of us let us begin ‘ Broad Sword calling Danny Boy, Broad Sword….

Best Bit : “That almost makes it worse”

‘W’ Score : 22/23