Movie Forums Top 100 War Movies - Group Watch

I feel much like CR did. It's a great story that deserves to be told but the execution seemed uneven. It felt to me like the director wanted an action film but just couldn't go there. Right off the start, with how the escape happened, it seemed unrealistic and something that you'd see in an action film. There is tension at different points of the movie, but it's the type of tension that's usually felt before something awesome happens. The problem is that the action never comes, at least for the most part. I wanted it to even though it's not that kind of story. I did like the movie but unfortunately I think it's quite forgettable.

The escape via Caribou is a pretty legendary tale, not something I will forget anytime soon. I do agree the overall experience of the film would have benefited from editing out seconds even minutes from certain scenes, making the overall runtime 20 minutes shorter. Especially the suffering from the loss of the big toe. Felt like they wanted to evoke The Revenant type audience reactions/emotions.

__________________
Entertainment Log
Letterboxd profile

The next host is...

@John-Connor
Thursday Next

__________________
IMDb
Letterboxd

Nomination #26

I should get to it tomorrow.

Anthropoid...Glad it was chose as I was just reading about it after watching The 12th Man and was looking at more true covert operations movies about WWII. I remember Thief recommend it to me in my Spam my War countdown ballot.

And I see both John-Connor and MovieGal recommended Anthropoid to me in the past!

Saw this as more of an action/thriller than the average war film, and that's just fine with me. Like the last film, this is based upon a fantastic true story. I thought this film was more professionally made. Very good tension and action, nothing extraordinary. These guys were certainly heroic, but it appeared to me that their actions were too costly to their own people to be worthwhile. A good watch.

Wild coincidence, as I just finished Men Without Wings (1946) from the Cannes list. It was a completely blind watch. It starts with the major event that happens about an hour into Anthropoid, and then deals with the fallout much the same way.

Was it any good?

Yea but I wouldn't call it a must watch

I seen that you were going to watch it, so I looked it up and it was not highly rated...but you never know until you watch it. It was a Czech film, and that's pretty cool in it's own right. Can't say I've seen many from that country.

I'm still checking out war films, hoping to find a good one that you guys and Thursday haven't seen. I seen one last night that was decent but not a home run.

I still have quite a few on my watchlist but I've been doing pretty good with being off work for a while

Just finished Anthropoid, and I thought it was pretty good. It's tense and has some good character develoment in the first hour, but my main takeaway was its exploration of how easily the resistance efforts could backfire. Was their plan worth it given the toll it took on Czechoslovakia? The most telling scene for me was how, after the resistance fighters realized how their plan was starting to backfire, none of them seemed happy upon Given what they had observed at that point, they were all aware this would make the situation worse for everyone around them. It's a great way of showing how quickly your priorities can shift. Regardless of whether you found their plans worthwhile though, their stories made for an engaging film. It won't make my ballot, but I liked it quite a bit.

I wonder, was it just bad planning?

I'm not a history buff, but even if they carried out the mission very well, I think the Nazis probably still would've killed as many people as they did for retribution. Maybe even more. Who knows?

That's what I mean, so didn't they see that coming? Or maybe they figured they were killing so many anyway and the additional was just collateral damage for the cause?

That's an interesting way of looking at it. I'll have to research the resistance efforts during WW2 to see if "the collateral is worth it for the cause" was a commonly held viewpoint amongst those involved as i imagine some people felt that.

It's well documented that anytime a German solider especially an officer was killed in an occupied country by local resistance fighters...the Nazis would gather up 100s of innocent civilians and kill them as a warning. I've heard that in WWII documentaries and referenced in a number of movies including The 12th Man, which we just seen. I'm sure the assassins were well aware that the killing of Reinhardt Heydrich would result in a huge amount of retaliation killings.

What Anthropoid (which I seen last night) didn't make clear was that the British hatched this assassination idea along with the Czech government in exile in London.

Good movie! But IMO a stupid plan that was more about showing the world that the down trodden Czechs and British could dish out punishment to the Nazis but at what cost to the Czech civilians.

Solid movie with a standout script and effective acting too. I liked it. I especially liked the way the characters were written and I liked the type of scenes that we were shown and also those that we weren't shown.

An example of what we were shown was the meeting/date in the nightclub were the women show up for their dates with the two resistances fighters decked out in their finest clothes. Cillian Murphy says to the redhead, 'you're the most beautiful woman in the club.' Which she takes as a compliment...He then scolds her about her fancy look and dark lipstick saying it will draw attention from the Nazis seated in nearby tables...and attention is not what these two men want. I liked how that scene was written to resolve the problem..with a slap and a quick exit. The payoff is seeing the Nazis laugh at the poor man who was just slapped by the redheaded beauty.That scene was potatoes for the meat, nicely done.

I equally liked that we don't see anything from the head Nazi, Reinard Hedrick. We don't need to see his evil doings, we don't need to see anything about him until the final end.

So I thought this movie was tops except for one thing that drove me batty...the cinematography. Many of the scenes were filmed as close-ups, so close that the top of the actors heads were cut off. I get that a director would use this tight framing for a tense meeting or emotional conflict between two people but the camera rarely pulls back and shows us the whole 'picture'. The effect was the film felt like I was watching it on a phone, ugh! yet I was watching it on my big screen TV. Well big enough screen for me, it's 42 inches but I set fairly close to it.
++