Saints and Soldiers: The Void

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Chris D An edge of your seat movie about the last days of WW2, when the Nazis were still fighting and it's up to a few soldiers to prevent some hidden German tanks from ambushing the unsuspecting troops travelling along a backup route, in ... the void. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 03/22/24 Full Review Audience Member I wanted desperately to see this third installment in the Saints and Soldiers franchise and say that Ryan Little learned from his heinous mistakes in "Saints and Soldiers: Airborne Creed". I have to wonder if my desperation has subconsciously influenced me into saying that this one is infinitesimally better than its predecessor, or if it is actually just as bad or worse. When one of my re-enacting associates posted on Facebook that he enjoyed this one more than Fury, it dawned on me what this film is. It is EXACTLY like a re-enactment battle would be! Everyone is in clean uniforms that they're afraid to get dirty (we re-enactors have to pay for our own uniforms, equipment, and blank ammo, which are all very expensive), operating clean, freshly painted vehicles, and delivering dialog that is written to be an instructional narrative for the audience. This is truly a re-enactment on film, complete with blow-dried hair and bullets that don't even put a mark on wooden barrels at point-blank range! By that, I'm referring to a shootout in one scene in which a character takes cover behind a wooden barrel, which real bullets would have destroyed very quickly, but he's safe and sound from the automatic weapon being fired at him. Beyond the squeaky clean look of the characters and equipment, this film is bad on almost every level and its foundation is every cliché possible, including a cold-blooded German officer that shoots one of his own men with very little provocation without a second thought. Naturally, that was done to ensure that the audience regards the Germans as the bad guys in the war who must be defeated. What actually makes this film potentially slightly better than its immediate predecessor in the franchise is the filmmakers' attempt to address the issue of racist policies and prevailing attitudes in the U.S. Army during the war. The problem is, it portrays one soldier out of a dozen or so as being racist, while none of the others share his contempt for Owens, the Negro soldier that circumstances have suddenly thrust in amongst them. The reason that I call this a problem is because in the 1940s, racism in the military and many US states was mandated by law, and it was something that the majority of European-Americans grew up with culturally. Even if a particular White American was not the type of person to automatically dislike people of African descent for no specific reason, he or she had still been taught that they were an inferior race, and most people just accepted that as being the way it was. Very few people stuck up for "Negroes" in those days, and even fewer in the military did so. Therefore, racism was not the "accepted exception" that this film portrays. Additionally, the inevitable conversion of the American racist and changing his attitude because of his interaction with Owens and being told of Owens' mistreatment and his father's lynching because of their race is even more far-fetched. After all is said and done, my first impulse was to give this film only one star, but I'm giving it an additional star for taking on the issue of racism, even if it took it on in a highly simplified way, and even though there was no point in putting it into the film. Trying to be woke before wokeness was a thing isn't going to change the past. Rated 1.5/5 Stars •  Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 01/30/23 Full Review randy k I had read Harry Yeide's excellent 'The Tank Killers: A History of America's World War II Tank Destroyer Force' and thought the screenwriter could possibly have lifted an incident from his book. Unfortunately, I saw a Hollywood 'woke' delusion that has no historical foundation. A great disappointment. Rated 1/5 Stars •  Rated 1 out of 5 stars 03/30/23 Full Review Audience Member Someone had some nice toys and wanted to film themselves playing army in the woods using all the cliches from the big movies. But do appreciate the statement it was making about racism. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 02/27/23 Full Review Audience Member Better than average attention to tactics, props, weapons, etc. A satisfying tank skirmish with a decent plot and passable characters. The German tanks are reproductions of the very early Panzer IIIA (5 medium road wheels versus 6 in later models) re-fitted with a 50mm gun, and the American M18s are restorations. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/21/23 Full Review Audience Member Feels like a TV Movie. The story is okay, if you like tank battles it might keep you interested, but the overall "TV Movie" feel stops it from being anything special. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/27/23 Full Review Read all reviews

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