Anthropoid (2016)

I don't know how I'm getting there, but I'm again discussing a movie based on real facts, despite my strong belief that the main reason to lose two hours with a film is to escape real life. "Anthropoid" describes an operation conducted in 1942, having as target the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the number 3 of the Nazi hierarchy at the time. It's the only thing I watched this week, so that's the topic of today.

I won't teach a history lesson here. In a couple words, this assassination was the only event of this kind that was successful during WW2 vs. a high rank official in the Reich. The action was planned and executed by a small group in the Czech resistance, Heydrich being assigned to Prague at the time to coordinate the occupancy of Bohemia and Moravia, and earning his nickname of "The Butcher". The historical analysis makes debatable to this day the utility of the assassination, considering the harsh reprisals in balance with the elimination of the main architect of the Holocaust, but let's leave the historical analysis for historians.

About the movie: it's split in two by the assassination, which takes place around half of its running time, between the planning and the outcome. It's a pretty accurate description of the facts if you compare them at least with what Wikipedia gives, where the details that are not that easy to grasp. In this context it's actually good that we have some tiny additions like two romance stories to compensate a bit, which anyway don't impact much the realism of the story. The two main agents deployed by the exiled Czech government to execute the mission - roles made by Cillian Murphy and Jamie Dornan - are very convincing, with an interesting nuance at some point of switch between certainty and anxiety. Besides that, the movie is quite good on the technical side, especially on editing. Even though it might not look so out of reality as the "Valkyie" operation that barely failed in removing Hitler from power, it has its own degree of spectacular which would put it normally in the action movies category. Unfortunately though, even the exaggerated facts seem to be mostly based on true facts, which finally makes you look at the movie a bit different than on an action film. Anyway, it definitely delivers on the impact side...

Rating: 4 out of 5

Dunkirk (2017)

I've seen "Dunkirk" around a month ago, but I really wasn't in any mood for blogging (personal reasons). Now = late night, no sleep => I decided trying a short entry with what I can still remember... When I heard about this movie I asked myself how can you fill up two hours with a subject that's in the end a bit limited as... narrative amplitude, I can't find a better term now. The evacuation from Dunkirk might have been a miracle during WW2, but let's be fair... as story for a movie it doesn't have much potential. As historic fact, what we have is a mass evacuation lasting about a week - how can you get a movie out of that? I thought I'll see again the recipe applied in "Pearl Harbor", or "Titanic", or even "Hacksaw Ridge" (keeping the distance to the other two) including a romantic story + more stuff in background. Well... I got an example that you can do without that.

First of all, a movie doesn't need to last two hours - something that most directors seem to forget these days. "Dunkirk" has a bit more than 90 minutes, in which we effectively have the evacuation of the Allied troops from the French coast. There's not even much of the historical context - how did it get to this, and why the German army let enough time for it to happen (sorry, but I'm not in mood for details - check Wikipedia). Second, you can see one more time that Nolan knows how to do a movie - what keeps you there is not necessarily the story, where we just have a couple narrative threads following a few simple people involved in the event. It's a movie with few dialogues, which already says something. What got me from the first scenes were the visuals, the audio, and the editing, which are at a really high standard. Everything is put together so well that this time I can even get over "the shepard tone", which I think nobody abuses so much as Nolan does in his movies. The only part I can nag about is maybe the time interleaving of the flashbacks that might lose you a bit. Besides that... is a lesson of movie making. Enough said.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Allied (2016)

"Allied" is a movie that tries to answer three questions... How much can you trust somebody? How far can you go to confirm your trust? and How much trust can you have after you decided to go that far?... Well, as I said, the movie tries. Succeeding is another story ...

A movie is a movie and life is life. "Allied" is a romance before all, and as cynical it may sound, I'm afraid is hard to find some title in the genre that's relevant in respect with how things really are (or maybe I'm a lost cause, who knows...). We have Brad Pitt, an allied agent sent in 1942's Africa behind enemy lines for organizing an assassination, where he must team up, ex-French resistance. I don't know if it's love at first sight (yet another unicorn...) but things move fast in any case. Mission accomplished, British residence for the girl, marriage, a child, everything seems perfect despite the Luftwaffe bombings. Until the British intelligence breaks some news...

Well, I already went far enough with the subject and I would say as usual: "watch the movie" for what's following, but already the trailer gives you more. I think it's the worst I've seen this year. Fortunately I watched the movie before so it was still spoiler-free and I was able to discover something by myself. That the questions in the beginning might have also some other answers than I knew already :) At least in a movie...

Rating: 3 out of 5

Dead Snow (2009) & Red vs Dead (2014)

I've had before Norwegian movies on my blog. And I think I said that they're not really on "my frequency". Well, I've finally found the exception .. a double one = "Dead Snow" & "Dead Snow 2" ...

The first movie follows a "classic" plot. A group of medicine students decide to spend a winter vacation on a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Of course, that's a bad idea ... The original part comes with the bad things that happen. More precisely at the end of WW2, in that area, a nazi platoon didn't just quietly packed and left, but decided to stay a bit longer ... years longer ... as zombies ;) Obviously, I won't get into details, but to follow with the 2nd movie I have to give a spoiler = in the first, there's a lone survivor...

... And the lone survivor has a personal vendetta to carry on in the sequel. If the first film seems to you to be just another zombie movie, with more original zombies .. the sequel is so innovative that at some point mocks itself declaring during an exchange of lines that what's going there can give birth to a new movie genre :). The trailer gives some info, and more than that I just can say that "red" in the title links again to ww2 ( guess how ;) ).

Both movies are very bloody (e.g., we have a tribute to "Evil Dead" on cutting an arm with a chainsaw). Both movies have "outrageusly awful" scenes ( I prefer to not give examples :) ), but usually caught in a sufficiently funny context, that you can forgive them. Both movies have something different to other zombie movies, the comic side which actually works here. I think just "Shaun of the Dead" managed to pull this off, "Warm Bodies" being the counterexample I prefer to give (we don't count "Fase 7" or "Cabin in the Woods" - those are not pure zombie movies). And the second movie manages this that well, that's mandatory to also see the first to catch every bit of what the sequel offers ;)

Rating:
Dead Snow - 3 out of 5
Red vs Dead - 4 out of 5

Kelly's Heroes (1970)

Ok, yet another week without a movie, so I fear that I'll set a shortness record for this entry. Since two weeks ago I was close to bashing "Monuments Men", and I was ending with a recommendation for "Kelly's Heroes" as a WW2 movie, I thought it might be a good subject. If "Monuments Men" is pretty undecided about what it wants to be, "Kelly's Heroes" is well defined as action/comedy = 100% entertainment purpose. The subject is simple: some members of the allied troops are establishing a "private enterprise" in the middle of the war after they find out that a German bank has gold, lots of gold. The problem is the location behind enemy lines. Which leads to an entire adventure filled with issues that range from logistics problems up to face-to-face meetings with enemy tanks. About the casting, Clint Eastwood is Kelly - the organizer of the gold freedom operation, but the most memorable character is Oddball, Donald Sutherland in probably one of his best roles. Since I don't have any more time left for writing, check out the clips & enjoy the movie ;)

Rating: 5 out of 5

The Monuments Men (2014)

I've had low expectations for "The Monuments Men" after I've seen a couple of not so favorable reviews. And I guess somewhere in the back of my mind I was expecting to like it exactly because I wasn't expecting too much. Unfortunately I have to confirm what others wrote. Bland.

It's a movie centered on a less known WW2 episode. The activity of an American-British-French squad of art experts, with a mission to steal back what the German army stole first, and in direct competition with the Russian threat of moving the art objects further into the East. The movie is a relatively chaotic depiction of the sequence of heroic actions taken to completion, more or less successfully, by "the monuments men" on the poster. I'm sorry for the light irony, but the way the story is presented asks for it. You don't have something clearly defined in front of your eyes. Sometimes is a real war drama, sometimes moves to a comic side, sometimes starts to look like a WW2 spy thriller, and you have also a thin romance thread to complete the mixture. Maybe all of these could work together, but I don't know .. not here. It's actually not a mix, all sides are quite separated from each other, and passing from one to another is done too often and too swift. It has its moments here & there but .. the final result doesn't impress in any way.

The story itself is interesting, and the movie has some documentary value (although it neither inspires much credibility on how accurate it is, but I didn't do a proper check so I can't tell). As a fiction though, for a WW2 behind enemy lines treasure hunt story, I would strongly recommend "Kelly's Heroes". Old but waaaaay better ;)

Rating: 3 out of 5 (at the bottom limit)