MovieChat Forums > Saints and Soldiers (2005) Discussion > Please, stop bashing.

Please, stop bashing.

posted 15 years ago by Tsavo
22 replies | jump to latest

I understand that some of you may not have liked the movie, I also understand that some of you may not like mormons, but dislike of mormons is no reason to bash a movie. I will admit, there have been better movies. But for a low budget, independently made film, this one was solid, and in many ways a decent movie. I have also heard the "preachy" line thrown around a lot. And really, this movie was FAR less preachy than a LOT of other movies. And it was subtle,. I saw that some of you pointed out that a lot of the things being attacked and pointed out as "mormon" really could be applied to several other relgions, which is good. Because in reality this move was subtle, though I will admit there where cliches. It truly does amaze me that for a movie that's not that widespread, there really are a lot of you who come here seemingly to specifically bash it, when far worse movies exist. If you want a flipside example of a bad film, look at september dawn. Or for bad movies in general there are many others that I would deem far more deserving of criticism. Bloodrayne, anyone? I could list a lot of movies that some like, but many would deem as far worse than this film. At the very least, please give a VALID reason for dislike of the film? Rather than just standing there and claiming that the movie sucks and the dialogue was horrible. Tell us WHY the dialogue was horrible, and give us evidence, because frankly, anyone can claim to know anything. It does not mean they do. I once ran into someone who tried telling me that the movie "The ghost in the darkness" sucked in part because of the fact that the zebra they used was the "wrong kind of zebra" and he claimed that he knew the zebra did not belong there because of its stripes. He took himself very seriously on the matter and made the judgement off 3 seconds of footage. So I beg you, PLEASE don't just come on here to bash a movie based on dislike of mormons, and IF you have a valid arguement, present it as such. People do not enjoy sitting here and watching other people make baseless or ill informed claims.

[–] kevinryan963 15 years ago

Absolutely awful film, wooden acting and dull and what were all those hallucinations about? It has to be the worst war film of all time.
How come it won all those awards from bodies nobody has ever heard of?
I'm selling my copy of it today, its that bad.

[–] 15 years ago

[deleted]

[–] vosges1945 14 years ago

*****
Absolutely awful film, wooden acting and dull and what were all those hallucinations about?
*****

Seeing that the movie was very clear and concise about the hallucinations I think you either didn't watch it and are here just to join the bash-wagon, didn't pay attention and therefore have rendered your own comments moot, or are incapable of understanding and are ranting for failing in that.

Guilt + exhaustion = hallucinations. It really is that simple.

*****
How come it won all those awards from bodies nobody has ever heard of?
*****

It was actually watched by people who paid attention and understood it?

:)

Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order

[–] Amthermandes 15 years ago

This really is one of the best war movies of all time, and Tsavo, well said my friend.

"Negative, I am a meat popsicle"

[–] Tsavo 15 years ago

Thank you.

[–] 15 years ago

[deleted]

[–] bluesguy 15 years ago

Ditto.

[–] roemichael 15 years ago

Well it may not matter to you guys in the US but to someone from the UK, the accent of the "British" officer makes it difficult to take the movie seriously. Trust me when I say that it is truly awful - why didn't they cast someone British? There are certainly plenty of us in the US!

Personally, I found the characterisation and dialogue unengaging to the point where I didn't care what happened to any of the characters. This is a subjective judgement, of course. One man's compelling drama is another's sleep inducement...

Finally, I have a bit of a general issue with they way that the Malmedy incident has been made into such a monumental event. Not the fault of this movie, I accept, but it does affect my personal enjoyment. Not to trivialise what happened at Malmedy (I have toured the battlefields of the Ardennes offensive), but there were a great many terrible atrocities during the War, of which the Malmedy event was only one (check out Oradour-sur-Glane for a shocker).

Ultimately though, no one is right or wrong. Whether a film is "great" is entirely a personal call...

[–] d3193 14 years ago

I have to agree with roemichael. The fake British accent was really terrible and immediately jolted me out of the story. The other characters were drawn believably - not the Brit.

And the cigarettes. The producers went to some lengths to replicate a period Lucky Strike pack. Trouble is, this brand was pretty much non-existent in the UK during WW2. The airman would have been smoking a British cigarette (maybe Players or Dunhill).

Other than that, the movie was not great by any means (too many cliches in both story and dialog) - but not terrible either. Just my opinion.
I did find the religious message to be too strong for my taste, but had no idea that it had been made by a church group until I checked here at IMdB.

[–] DD-931 14 years ago

No.

There is quite clearly an attempt by Mormons to pump up this film on IMDB as much as they can. Which is fair enough, I suppose. But the very fact that this film is so ridiculously overpraised in a blatantly manipulative way is reason enough for the rest of us to speak up so that people aren't fooled by the "chorus".

And the shame is, if the rest of us non-Mormons were spared the shameless exaggerations about the quality of this film, we'd be able to enjoy a modest, flawed, but perfectly adequate film.

[–] MikeWeiler 13 years ago

I dunno, I didn't feel like there was a strong push towards any specific religion. I am not Christian, Catholic, or Mormon but I think that the Bible was more of a representation of god. My Grandfather (who fought in WW2) always said "There are no atheists in a fox hole." (I think that is a common phrase.) What I saw, or maybe chose to see, was a great movie about WW2/war in general, and one that didn't portray one side as inherently evil like many other movies unfortunately have. And in this movie they dipped their hands into religion as well. I think they wanted to feed us "holiness", "good", and "god", which ARE common motifs found in specific religions. But I do not think they were trying to feed us those religions. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but what I saw was god+war not "insert specific religion here"+war. :/

[–] duolian 14 years ago

I have to agree. It was a major distraction through the whole movie. They would have done far better to cast a British actor or to have rewritten to be an American - though there may have been accuracy issues with that.

[–] franklinlj 13 years ago

Malmedy was a significant event - to us. Admittedly, it does not count for much in the overall scheme of WWII, but we miss our people, it is only natural. Similarly, I expect a Dutch movie would make a lot of the destruction of Rotterdam. And why not, indeed? It is their business to mourn their own.

I have seen Oradour-sur-Glane and been duly impressed. And despite the fact that is is only a fleabite compared to, say, the Russian victims of Einsatzgruppen, I don't think the French are making a fuss about nothing.

[–] cmeyer38 12 years ago

When you talk about the Malmedy incident being minor in the whole war, you are forgetting one thing. It's now 70 years later and looking over all the records from World War II, it's easy to see the whole elephant. However, the individual soldiers only saw their little piece of the elephant and this was a story of a few of the soldiers and their little piece of the elephant. It was a big deal to *them* and an important part of the war to *them*. If you read the trivia notes, you'll notice that actor Charles Durning was an actual survivor of the Malmedy Massacre.

[–] joepizza 13 years ago

Yeah
People may hate the Mormons, but people ALWAYS hate what they are jealous of. Whether or not people think the religion is weird, and I do, the Mormons are successful, kind, classy, would not hurt anyone and the whole world would be better off if there was more of em.

People hate the USA, Jews, The Yankees, Cowboys, Mormons, Microsoft, etc...ANYTHING that reminds them how far you can go if you are DEDICATED TO DOING WHATS RIGHT.

As this generation loves to say , and *beep* them haters.

[–] frequency-2 11 years ago

Gee, I never bashed it on Imdb, let me start now! If your gonna use real events to frame your story, do us all a favor and be sure you know the history of the bleeding events.
DO NOT discredit the US Army by telling us the 101st Airborne Division are depicted as being present at the massacre. In reality, the 101st was held in strategic reserve by SHAEF at this point in time to recover from combat in Operation Market-Garden. The 101st did not reach the front until December 18 (the massacre was on the 17th), and was sent to Bastogne, far to the south of where Kampfgruppe Joachim Peiper operated. Most of the victims were actually from the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion.
Get your facts straight and use your imagination in the dialog, please

[–] frequency-2 11 years ago

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[–] frequency-2 11 years ago

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[–] frequency-2 11 years ago

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[–] frequency-2 11 years ago

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