As we head into occupied territory on the way to face the final days of the German army, we unsurprisingly find ourselves once again in the territory of Don Michael Paul, a man who has never met a film he couldn’t sequelize for around half the price. However, in a filmography that contains a truly alarming amount of sequels (Tremors, Death Race, Scorpion King, Jarhead, Sniper and *checks notes* Kindergarten Cop), there stands a noticable one off that isn’t noticably carrying a number dangling off the back of the title – and I’m not talking about Steven Seagal vehicle, Half Past Dead.
You see, if Paul knows one thing better than DTV sequels, it’s DTV war films, but before delving into reviving the Sniper franchise or bizarrely switching Sam Mendes’ Jarhead to a pro-war action franchise (?), he took a crack at putting his own patriotic mark on World War II in Company Of Heroes. However, maybe sequels are more his speed…
As the Allies continue to advance into Nazi Germany during the bitter cold of 1944, the particularly scrappy 2nd Infantry Division are finally given a simpler mission after the last one cost them their sniper. Nevertheless, Lieutenant Joe Conti orders Sergeant Matheson to embark on a routine mission to deliver Christmas hams to the front line, but while in their way, the men of the 2nd Infantry manage to stumble across an entire Panzer division and find themselves peppered with tank fire as they absorb heavy losses and retreat.
However, as they fall back to report the large cluster of tanks that just whipped their asses, the men stumble upon something else, which has got to be some sort of WWII record. Near Leidenfeld, the squad finds a burnt out, German experimental site and a frazzled OSS agent who tells them that the Nazis are close to perfecting the nuclear bomb and if they don’t take on his mission and extract defection-happy Doctor Luca Greenwald from the clutches of the sinister Kommandant Beimler, the tide of the war will soon turn. The plan is to board a cargo train to Stuttgart and meet up with a contact codenamed Kestrel, but major problems arise when most of Matheson’s squad keep getting inconveniently killed, leaving only a rag-tag bunch of survivors to forge ahead.
Thrown into the role of leadership is the vastly inexperienced Nate Burrows, a country boy who only discovered that he was a natural sniper by accident the day before and his team is solely made up of Dean Ransom, a Lieutenant demoted down to cook after a former botched mission that saw his squad survive D-Day unscathed, only to be obliterated within 15 minutes on their next mission. Along the way, the pair recruit the hulking Ivan Pozarsky of the Red Army, who just might want to take the schematics of the bomb back to his own people; and Brent Willoughby of the RAF who just seems to want to punch Nazis in the face. Can this raggedy bunch stop the Nazis using the power of the Atom to change the war?
It’s extraordinarily telling that Company Of Heroes is actually a very loose adaptation of the strategy-based video game of the same name, because for most of its runtime, it feels like you’re watching someone hog the joypad as they play Call Of Duty II while refusing to let you have a go. We get a bunch of WWII tropes masquerading as characters who accident wander their way into the middle of a world-changing plot that sees virtually every single scene eventually turn into a sizable (and repetitive) shoot out before they can pass onto the next level – sorry, I meant scene. In a world where filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, Terence Malick and Quentin Tarantino have delivered vastly different views of what a modern day WWII film can be, there’s something a little uncomfortable about Company Of Heroes settling on trying to be a man-on-a-mission movie and then just turning into a basic shoot-em-up whenever the plot is in danger of becoming too complex. This is World War II stripped back to it’s most shallow form, where Nazis have gimpy legs and occasionally shout their orders in English despite being only surrounded by German speaking troops and inexperienced farm boys can guide a dangerous mission to success simply because the good guys always win. Simply put, this is a war movie made to watch while you’re scrolling through your phone that somehow doesn’t feel like anything is at stake despite the fact that Jürgen Prochnow’s scientist has only gone and beaten Oppenhiemer to the punch and built the Nazis a bomb.
Obviously, taking his cue from Inglorious Basterds, director Don Michael Paul endeavours to make his explodey opus as about as historically accurate as Captain America: The First Avenger; but while you could accuse everything from The Dirty Dozen, to Where Eagles Dare for taking sizable liberties with the source material, at least they were tense, well crafted thrillers that still clung to the notion of treating the conflict with respect. Here, troops on both sides are mere cannon fodder to be cut down with a splash of CGI blood as the script barely bothers to give anyone an actual personality unless the actor involves manages to do it by accident.
Take Chad Michael Collins’ Nate Burrows, whose arc is so basic, the director lifted almost wholesale when he cast the actor as Tom Berenger’s son in Sniper: Legacy. Not only does his character find a dangerous mission suddenly thrust upon him after everyone around him is killed, but he also discovers that he’s a natural born sharpshooter by accident when he scoops up a sniper rifle and instantly pulls off a near-impossible shot. Similarly, Tom Sizemore finds his glory days getting ever further in the distance as he plays basically the same, gruff character he played in both Saving Private Ryan, Pearl Harbour and Black Hawk Down (which isn’t even a WWII film). Things get even more bizarre when Vinnie Jones shows up as a RAF prisoner of war who acts very much like Jones dors in virtually everything else he’s ever done. The movie even strains to stick him into a bar fight just so he can go all hooligan on the German army as he brings a headbutt to a gunfight and still wins.
However, while I’ll quite happily admit that despite limited funds, Michael Paul has some pretty decent production values to play with (awful CGI bombers notwithstanding) and despite the plot being about as nuanced as toilet graffiti, everyone certainly looks the part. But unfortunately the vapid characters, repetitive action sequences and mustache twirling villains betray the visuals to make Company Of Heroes feel about a grounded as one of the earlier Fast & Furious sequel as it trades in honor and sacrifices with what you’d get if you ask a thirteen year old to describe what the war was like for a school project that he didn’t study for.
Bland Of Brothers.
🌟🌟
We Have Issues 