roland-scialom Review of Shock Troops

Shock Troops (1967)

There is no place for outsiders in serious conflicts.

[10/10 · 13 July 2016]

During the Second World War, somewhere in France, a group of fighters of the Résistance attacks a German police station to release some of its members imprisoned there. The released guys are taken, in a big hurry, to the camp of the people of the Résistance. Once in the camp, the résistants discover that among their companions who were released, there is a guy who was also detained by the Germans and who doesn't belong to their group. Inicially, they think that this guy is a spy, and in this case they should kill him to protect their group. But this guy tells to them that he was detained because of his smuggling activities and that he doesn't support in any way the Germans. He fails to convince them, they decide to kill him and appoint one of them to do the job. When this résistant takes the guy in the forest to shoot him, the guy succeeds to convince the resistant to let him free. After walking for a while in the woods, the guy discovers that the Germans have surrounded the place and are about to catch the résistants. Instead of getting away, the guy walks back to the camp of the résistants to tell them that they are being attacked by the Germans. Eventually, after some fighting, most of the resistants are killed and a handful of them caught alive. The last scene is on an iron bridge across a mountain gorge. The Germans line up the resistants and go killing them one after the other. The guy who is a the end of the line takes advantage of the distraction of the Germans, to escape, climbing down the iron structure of the bridge. The title of the film says all about this story: "Un De Trop", which means that there is no place in a conflict, for one person who doesn't belong to one of the parts of this conflict, or in other words for an outsider. It is a great and instructive story. I saw it more than thirty five years ago, but I remember very well of it. It is a pity that it has not been widely publicized.