)It was astounding to be right there with a LOT of stars and great Canadian talent (even got to shake hands with Norman Jewison!
)Anyhoo, enough headswelling...
The movie is a huge (by Canadian standards) epic about romance between two couples and a particular part of a famous bloody battle durring the Great War. This is a movie I really wnated to love, insted I ended up only liking it. It has such great potential but suffers from a few things.
First the bad:
Editing: this is the major flaw of this movie. It suffers from bad editing and choise of when to cut away and return and many times the flow of a scene of moment is lost. There are often small sequential gaps that left you scratching your head.
I think this movie would have benefiteed from actually being longer (it ran slightly less than 2 hours) giving a chance to flesh out secondary characters that were really well done, but only glimpses of. And a chance to make some key moments feel less rushed (like the blossoming romance of our hero).
Some music cues were amazing and well done, and others were overdone and sappy.
Dialogue was occassionally clucky and seemed to try to hard to be poetic and epic.
The good:
Actors. The actors were all very well cast and Paul Gross is amazing! He's the type of actor with so much charisma that if he played Hitler, there would be a part of you that would hope the German's win.
Cinematography was very good. The sweeping landscapes of Calgary and the horror of the muddy battlefields were all well shot. Even some of the FX used sparingly to give you a greater sense of the utter horror of the battlefield landscape, mortar shells going off, etc, were chilling without being overdone. An the sound effects fo the battles were great! Reminded me of the opening of Saving Private Ryan!
Overall I give it a positive 3 out of 5.
I have a theory about Canadian films: We seem to be at our best telling a story on a small scale. We are not so good at epics. The best moments in this movie were the smaller, intimate moments between people and even the excrutiating private moments of battle. But when the movie tried to do a Braveheart moment, or a Gladiator moment it comes off a little 'forced'.
well, that's my
I have no idea how many people outside Canada will get a chance, or even wish to see this movie, but it is definately worth a look, even if you don't rush to your local theatre.
