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Reviews
Reveille (2023)
An excellent WWII film to add to your collection
Background:
The story of this film is inspired by chapter 4 of Audie Murphy's book "To Hell and Back". One could argue that it is a mostly accurate portrayal of events. Some of the characters are fictionalized for the sake of the story but it's quite clear that Jared Becker's "Sarge" is intended to portray Audie himself in this situation.
Audio and Cinematography:
For a low budget film, Mike has done quite a good job. There are some issues one could argue is linked to budget and while it does detract at times, it's not a deal breaker by any means. For example there are some fairly overexposed shots here and there and there are some jarring moments of audio where editing could have been a tad better but, like I said, this is more of a budget issue and not something I'd hold against the film as a whole. Overall while some of the audio is where the film is weakest, it is audio that also makes the film strong during its strongest moments. The cracking of incoming gunfire is absolute spectacularly well done. While the moments of combat are brief, they are more than memorable in both their sound design and staging. All scenes in the cave, however, suffered very few issues with audio and visuals and honestly most everything sounded well and the cinematography and lighting was quite well done. I do want to rewatch this in my theater room from a bluray or raw media instead of Amazon as I'm sure some of the issues I encountered was due to the streaming platform.
Technical Accuracy:
Akkerman was really striving for historical accuracy here and I think he did a very commendable job. Any issues were, at worst, incredibly minor and pedantic. I could go into what I noticed if someone wants but it really comes down to severe rivet counting if I'm being honest. It's significantly better than 99.9% of productions to include nearly every big budget film released in the last 20 years. The attention to detail is very good overall. Everything to very specific personal items, the way gear is being worn, the way its used, and the proper use of insignia given the period. Additionally, the feature of Afrika Korps uniforms on the NCOs as a carryover from their previous campaign is a nice touch.
Writing and Acting:
The writing and performances themselves has a lot to commend. The portrayal of panic was mostly done well but honestly the portrayal of wounds (MAJOR kudos to the makeup department of this one) and wounded soldiers in the way they act is almost scary how well done it is. Typically low budget and indie productions have terrible dialog but this isn't an example of that. While there were moments of unnecessary exposition and some minor cliches, the dialog was excellent overall and felt very throughout the film. This dialog was further enhanced by some rather stellar performances. Four in particular stand out in my mind (in no particular order): Joe Bongiovanni's Leo, Jake Powers' Rowe, Kevin Sinic's Artur, and Bernd Wittneben's Brander.
Final thoughts:
Overall Akkerman has created a beautiful film. It really hits some emotions that don't often arise in war films and we see the characters transform for better or for worse. The acting is quite believable and the writing quite organic. As a final rating I'd give it a 7/10. If it wasn't for some of the audio issues, it'd be a firm 8/10 in my book. It's not a bad film by any means, that was just something that broke my immersion a couple times. Additionally, it was slightly too long I'd argue. At 1 hour and 45 minutes, it told its story well but I feel like at 1 hour and 30 minutes, it could have achieved perfect flow. A minor complaint given the fact that this really is a fantastic film and one I would purchase on bluray without question and watch yearly.
Midway (2019)
*SPOILERS* Decent but could have been better
The good:
-Uniform and equipment accuracy was absolutely on point throughout the movie with exception of the Doolittle Raiders scenes. Everything down to the incredibly early war MkII USN goggles were featured.
-The physical aircraft mockups were very well done and, from what I've been told, the TBD mockup was even donated to the USS Midway museum.
-The sound design was fantastic and very immersive. Not as amazing as Dunkirk but deserves props nonetheless.
-There were a lot of little historical nuances that they nailed including the historical timeline leading up to the battle. Other, eve smaller, things appeared such as Halsey having shingles, Gaido's heroic action at the Marshall Islands, the Japanese wargames, etc.
-Some very memorable scenes. Everything involving Nimitz, Layton, and the codebreakers was fantastic. The Japanese scenes were all very well done as well.
The bad:
-The writing, oh the writing. It really feels like this was written by a film school student. The dialog was stiff and wooden along with the cookie cutter characters. While they represented real people, the film mostly made up their personalities with exception of a couple. The entire film was very disjointed and jumped around constantly and featured many scenes that served almost no purpose whatsoever. There were also scenes and characters that would appear randomly but we would never go back to them thus leaving the audience hanging with no follow through. While historically "neat" to see, they could have cut the Arizona scenes at Pearl Harbor, all of the Doolittle scenes and all of the Nautilus scenes. Honestly the whole way they lead up to Midway was a mess. They tried to cover too many events and, in doing so, was a master at none of them. In my opinion, they should made the first half an espionage thriller leading up to the battle rather than trying to spoon feed and explain/show the entire first year of the war in the Pacific.
-Animations. While the CGI itself was very good, the animations were not. Many of the aircraft maneuvers made zero actual sense. For example, the Pearl Harbor scenes featured Kate torpedo bombers dropping torpedoes from high altitude and parallel, not perpendicular, to the ships they were targeting. I'll be entirely honest in saying that the aerial combat was better in Pearl Harbor than this. Pearl Harbor gets a lot of hate but one thing it did well was blending real aircraft with CGI and making a rather believable air combat scene. The attack by B-26s annoyed me as well as those should have been B-17s, not B-26s. There were only four B-26s in the attack and they were all low level torpedo bombers.
-Acting. Well only about half of it. Nimitz, Layton, Halsey, the Japanese, and others were well acted. However a majority of the USS Enterprise cast seemed like a sequel to the Newsies with all the fake New York and Jersey accents. A lot of that goes back to the bad writing.
Overall the film was clearly made more to be a action blockbuster than a historical war film. In the former it did well, I'd give it a 9/10 if I were to watch it as a action blockbuster. As a historical war film, it's a 6/10. I'd definitely still recommend seeing it and I'll definitely still buy it but it could have been much better.