Hutnicks
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Jun 16, 2012
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Batalon (2015) 4.5/10
Hey look, it's Full Metal Uterus! Or tries to be.
What could have been a brilliant effort to tell the story of the Womens Battalion of Death in the First World War winds up being let down by dialogue that is on par with some of the worst American war films of the fifties. Stunningly shot and for the most part well acted this film contains two very well done trench warfare scenes taken from the Russian point of view. Unfortunately that is not enough to save it from cheesy expositional scenes and inconsistencies in the main characters. A shame really as this story is far deeper than the film dares to explore and the writing, which follows the en vogue vilification of the communist ascendance to power gets mired in it's own preachings by contriving scenarios that simply did not happen from what I have read of the actual events.
Yes the Battalion was formed and command was given to a decorated female officer who was apparently tough as nails. There are no accounts of any female soldier going out in front of the German trenches to pick wild flowers when they deployed however and it is that kind of cheese that demeans the actual story in this film. This was a group of female volunteers (over 2000 to begin with and whittled down to just 300 or so in a very quick training period) from all classes of Czarist Russia who went out when the men refused to fight and took on a hardened German Army who had been at war for 3 years and by all accounts did incredibly well against them. The film treats all that rather ambiguously resulting in the viewer coming away with a very distorted and piecemeal picture of the events.
It's about on par with Jolies effort at a war film, with better direction and cinematography.
Hey look, it's Full Metal Uterus! Or tries to be.
What could have been a brilliant effort to tell the story of the Womens Battalion of Death in the First World War winds up being let down by dialogue that is on par with some of the worst American war films of the fifties. Stunningly shot and for the most part well acted this film contains two very well done trench warfare scenes taken from the Russian point of view. Unfortunately that is not enough to save it from cheesy expositional scenes and inconsistencies in the main characters. A shame really as this story is far deeper than the film dares to explore and the writing, which follows the en vogue vilification of the communist ascendance to power gets mired in it's own preachings by contriving scenarios that simply did not happen from what I have read of the actual events.
Yes the Battalion was formed and command was given to a decorated female officer who was apparently tough as nails. There are no accounts of any female soldier going out in front of the German trenches to pick wild flowers when they deployed however and it is that kind of cheese that demeans the actual story in this film. This was a group of female volunteers (over 2000 to begin with and whittled down to just 300 or so in a very quick training period) from all classes of Czarist Russia who went out when the men refused to fight and took on a hardened German Army who had been at war for 3 years and by all accounts did incredibly well against them. The film treats all that rather ambiguously resulting in the viewer coming away with a very distorted and piecemeal picture of the events.
It's about on par with Jolies effort at a war film, with better direction and cinematography.