Hollywood presents WWII. Films that grind your gears.

[fastmongrel]

What war movies for technical, historical and downright awfulness reasons make you want to jump up and put your boot through the screen and throw your popcorn all over the room. For me its 4 recent films, in reverse order.

Saving Private Ryan. Actually not a bad war movie but come on Speilberg I think there might have been some non US folks there at the same time.

Inglorious Basterds, Come on Tarantino you can do better than this pile of steaming c**p. Boring, overlong, tasteless and so far over the top its in another war zone.

Pearl Harbour, What The Hell a chick flick with aeroplanes, a lack of historical accuracy and poor special effects. Plus acting so wooden they do all the facial expressions from A to B, Kate Beckinsale I have a wooden door wedge with more personality.

But BUT the biggest gear grinder of them all a movie guarunteed to make my blood boil U571. I cant actually say what I think of this movie without getting a lifetime ban.

 

[fastmongrel]

To balance things out 4 films that I really enjoy and dont offend me in anyway.

The Bridges at Toko Ri used F9 Panthers instead of F2 Banshees from the novel but near enough for film purposes as I believe there werent enough flyable Banshees available for filming.

Das Boot technically perfect and makes you sweat and duck when the escorts are coming in for an attack

Captive Heart the best POW movie and I always get a speck of dust in my eye at the end and have to blow my nose (NO I am not crying I am a man)

Cruel Sea Wrong ship used for HMS Saltash it should have been a River class not a Castle class but it was all that was available. A magnificent movie quite capable of being amongst the best films of all time. Moving, compassionate with a big heart a paen to all that fought in the Battle of the Atlantic whatever the colour of there flag.

 

[stona]

To Das Boot I would add Der Untergang (Downfall) absolutely superb. Now that the Germans feel able to make films about WW2 they make very good ones.

Grinding my gears? Too many to list, but top of the list of recent movies must be Red Tails. What a crock of sh*t. If the director/producers had just told the real story (which is remarkable enough) and made at least an effort at some historical accuracy it could have been very good

Cheers

Steve

 

[vikingBerserker]

Spot on about Red Tails, how anybody could screw up a cool story to begin with is beyond my imagination.

 

[redcoat]

Pearl Harbor
I hate this film because it implies that the American pilots who fought in the RAF Eagle squadrons were USAAF pilots who had been 'volunteered' by their government. When in fact the US government wouldn't allow any ex-USAAF or USN pilots to serve in them

 

[stona]

Don't get me going on U 571 which frankly insults the memory of the men of HMS Bulldog who first retrieved a machine from U 110 (and failed to retrieve the entire submarine!). Worse it demeans the memory of the men of HMS Petard who gave their lives later retrieving a machine, code books and settings from U 559.
It's disgraceful.
Steve

 

[Denniss]

U-571 as top of the worst, followed by Pearl Harbour and Saving Private Ryan. Not a Movie but Band of Brothers is questionable as well - enemy solders are too often depicted as doing very dumb things.
I don't like movies using ww2 just as background for Drama/lovestory/etc.
When I first saw U-571 I couldn't decide whether to cry out loud or just laugh. Both story, actors and special effects were more comedy than real on top of the factual errors.

 

[meatloaf109]

It's too bad that this is limited to WW2 movies, so I can't include the movie that p!ssed me off almost as bad as Pearl Harbor. (Hint: ALL the Fokker Dr-1's are red)
I'm not too big on any of the 1960's "Fantasy" war movies, but the ones that supposedly were about real battles, but went on a strange tangent, (The Battle of the Bulge), are deserving of scorn.
I agree that "U-571" was insulting to the men that did the real job.
On a side note, "Band of Brothers" was written from memories of the men that lived it.

 

[syscom3]

What's your problem with "Saving Private Ryan"? Its about Americans in batlle in Normandy. So what if the Brits and Canadians were not shown? Make your own freaking movie and exclude the Americans if you think you need balance.

BTW; have you heard of the U505? Captured by the USN and on display in Chicago.

 

[silence]

To Das Boot I would add Der Untergang (Downfall) absolutely superb. Now that the Germans feel able to make films about WW2 they make very good ones.

Have you seen Joseph Vilsmaier's "Stalingrad"? German production and nothing Hollywood about it.

 

[silence]

It's too bad that this is limited to WW2 movies, so I can't include the movie that p!ssed me off almost as bad as Pearl Harbor. (Hint: ALL the Fokker Dr-1's are red)
I'm not too big on any of the 1960's "Fantasy" war movies, but the ones that supposedly were about real battles, but went on a strange tangent, (The Battle of the Bulge), are deserving of scorn.
I agree that "U-571" was insulting to the men that did the real job.
On a side note, "Band of Brothers" was written from memories of the men that lived it.

I know of the non-WW2 film of which you speak. You're wrong: its WORSE than Pearl Harbor. And don't forget last year's tale about a BIG retired USN ship and aliens. (Still trying to figure out how four - or was it six? - men (a couple retirees included) were able to hand carry a 16" shell from the #3 magazine to the #1. Those shells weighed either 1900# (HE) or 2700# (AP).

Now Band of Brothers I can watch at anytime, anywhere. Absolutely amazing miniseries.

Have not seen U-571, but kinda want to - masochism, maybe?

 

[fastmongrel]

It's too bad that this is limited to WW2 movies, so I can't include the movie that p!ssed me off almost as bad as Pearl Harbor. (Hint: ALL the Fokker Dr-1's are red)
I'm not too big on any of the 1960's "Fantasy" war movies, but the ones that supposedly were about real battles, but went on a strange tangent, (The Battle of the Bulge), are deserving of scorn.
I agree that "U-571" was insulting to the men that did the real job.
On a side note, "Band of Brothers" was written from memories of the men that lived it.

You can talk about any war movie that grinds your gears or pops your corn. I put The Bridges of Toko Ri as one of my favourite movies and thats about Korea. Saw the Bedford Incident last week and thats another great movie though strictly its a Cold War movie supposedly based on the B59 incident when a USN carrier group dropped depth charges near a Soviet sub to force it to surface. Its a fascinating incident Soviet submarine B-59 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia thought by many to be the closest the world came to armageddon.

 

[pattle]

I thought that Band of Brothers was a lot better than Saving Private Ryan, Saving Private Ryan was still good though. The thing with Hollywood films is that they are made to make money and the big money is made from American audiences, and sorry but they just like to be told all the sh1t that they want to hear.
The best one for me is the BBC's Colditz series followed by the Russian film Come and See.

 

[pattle]

There was one especially bad film where Spitfires were painted as German and Me109's were painted as British.

 

[javlin]

What's your problem with "Saving Private Ryan"? Its about Americans in batlle in Normandy. So what if the Brits and Canadians were not shown? Make your own freaking movie and exclude the Americans if you think you need balance.

BTW; have you heard of the U505? Captured by the USN and on display in Chicago.

I agree,many more vets were alive when that movie premeired stated it lended itself more to the real thing than any other movie to that point.I would suspect that these vets were talking about the harshness of the conflict being depicted and not commenting on the storyline.That being said I still found the storyline amicable to my liking for after D-Day the story was as however the writer/producer wanted to deliver it and never for me became a "oh come on" type of film.

It's too bad that this is limited to WW2 movies, so I can't include the movie that p!ssed me off almost as bad as Pearl Harbor. (Hint: ALL the Fokker Dr-1's are red)
I'm not too big on any of the 1960's "Fantasy" war movies, but the ones that supposedly were about real battles, but went on a strange tangent, (The Battle of the Bulge), are deserving of scorn.
I agree that "U-571" was insulting to the men that did the real job.
On a side note, "Band of Brothers" was written from memories of the men that lived it.

That was my thinking on BoB's really!I have read the book twice and I bet I have watched each clip atleast ten times and still to this day I never bypast the prologue to each clip when the old men talk.I live in Biloxi and Pass Christian and Bay St. Louis are 15-30 minutes from my house and that is were Mr.Ambrose lived and to think some of those guys stayed with him during interviews makes me wish to be a fly on the wall.

Now Pacific while it had a couple of moments I generally felt it came no were near BoB's in it's intensity and story and I have read "Rising Sun" a Japanese view of the Pacific along with a couple from specific American Units(most of my reading Civil War).

 

[meatloaf109]

Yeah, I too, wished to hear the parts that were left out of the final cut for Band of Brothers. Especially Bill Guarner. I bet he is a great volume of stories.

 

[meatloaf109]

K, we are ranging a bit. I always remember my brothers comment, after watching John Wayne's "The Green Berets". He watched the whole thing without a word, until the end.
And then he said, "When I was in Viet-nam, the sun set in the west."
Boom!

 

[GrauGeist]

It's too bad that this is limited to WW2 movies, so I can't include the movie that p!ssed me off almost as bad as Pearl Harbor. (Hint: ALL the Fokker Dr-1's are red)

When the director was asked about that, he said he wanted to keep the DR.1s all red so people could tell who the bad guys were...

If he actually read a little bit of history, he would have discovered that most of the German and Austrian aircraft were some of the most colorful planes ever flown (and very few were completely red) and would have been easy to spot in that respect.

That is assuming the audience was blind to the fact that the "bad guys" had big black crosses all over their aircraft...

 

[meatloaf109]

Yep.....
We are talking CGI anyways. Those dumb@sses could have done a bit of historical research. The Fokkers and Albatross's of the Red Baron's squadron sported a wide variety of schemes based on the basic red of Richthofen's plane. And, wait, while we are on the subject, the Baron only flew one all red craft. The one he was killed in. That would have required some intelligence on the part of the research team...
Or they could have Googled it.

 

[VBF-13]

Pearl Harbor. Never watched it. That's the honest truth. All I had to do is see the highlights...