Customer Reviews

Brother's War

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

A story of Russian and German soldiers fighting on the Polish front, Spring 1945.

Let's get the laundry list out of the way. Average to horrible acting, a few pointless story lines, shaky cam style that ruins every battle scene, a music score that wrecks every other scene, multitudes of unfocused shots, a 5.1 sound that is mixed almost entirely wrong, rudimentary CGI, really fake hand to hand, artillery and high caliber rifles that had no recoil, and so on.

Now the good. Got to see some nice footage of nearby California (subbed for Poland), got to see my favorite mutant biker from Weird Science play a Russian, and that covers it. It had some emotional moments to it, and I give them props for showing multi-national cooperation in times of escaping Russian bad guys (German, Brit and whatever the gal was trying to be).

Special features: A multi-page screen text about the Freemasons. Putting aside the bad grammar and poor spelling, it contained some sad facts about their organization during the war. Also included is a nine-minute making-of showing the production team and extras doing their thing. Has some informative material on the props and rehearsals.

I give this two stars for the film and extras. I also noticed the few high rating reviews out there are from cast members, which I understand.

Pros

- Everyone thinking about making a movie should watch this to learn what not to do.

Cons

Acting

- Horrible, actors appear to have to be reminded when to say their lines, high school project quality.

Camera work

- Most scenes are out of focus, cameras move and pan when they shouldn't and don't when they should, shaky almost every scene, composition and headroom is always wrong, horrible headroom in every scene, all scenes have horrible camera angles. The camera lingers way too long after every scene. Don't think they used a stationary camera the entire movie.

Fighting scenes

- First fight scene shows soldiers standing and walking back and forth in the trenches without helmets. Fake, cheesy explosions and gun shots, soldier shooting pistol moves hand forward and back like a ten year old, hand to hand combat is horrible, guns have no recoil, gun shot wounds are never present in clothing. Cameras are always zoomed in too far to hide the horrible acting.

Music

- Climactic the entire movie. Two soldiers walking down the road and they have full battle music blasting. Makes no sense. Music is all wrong.

There's so much more to write but I'm going to put in Band of Brothers and watch a good war movie. I'm upset I used a free Redbox rental on this movie.

The DVD cover for this movie, the one for my movie rental is different that the one shown here, is awesome and the whole reason I chose this movie. The DVD cover is the best thing about this movie. It's terrible in everyway. I love the accents, French, British, American and that's just the over actors playing the Germans. It's cliche, the writing is bad, the actors are bad. The plot is silly. Just don't bother.

I can only guess that this film is made to glorify the Masonic Order. Otherwise it is an inaccurate mess. The Germans are good, the Russians are evil, the Brit is plucky. The Polish nurse has OCD and can only think about helping wounded Germans. A characteristically inadequate backstory does not indicate she is a collaborator, which leaves the viewer wondering how she developed such complete amnesia about the utter destruction of her country at the hands of the occupying Nazis.

100 minutes of your life you'll wish you'd spent watching a better war film, which means almost any one.

This movie has a strange joining forces of a British officer and a German

who are prisoners of the Russian at the end of WWII.

Not the best movie ever but pretty good for what seems like a low budget film.

The German uniforms are very strange, but the Russian ones look

likely. The weapon the Captain uses with a round magazine

didn't look like anything I remember the Germans having.

The light German tank in the film just ain't so...ha, ha...

I doubt any of those tanks exist today?

The Russian at this point in the war were using a lot of American weapons

and probably uniforms? So what did Stalin intend at this time?

No one knows, but he certainly had ideas several years later.

What a farce! Hogan's Hero's is more historically accurate, for the love of Pete! What were you guys smoking prior to watching/reviewing this B-movie? My 16 yr old is easy to please when it comes to movies, but even he was pissed that he drove 2 miles to the Cub Foods (Redbox) and wasted $1.99 of his money on this plotless, poorly acted, waste of everyone's time. He said, that he and his buddies could have made a more convincing war movie in the backyard, and I must concur. SAVE YOUR TIME AND MONEY FOLKS!

I just finished watching this movie on DVD. Brother's War deserves to be watched and recommended. The critical comments have to do with some problems with the low budget aspects as mentioned and some historically inaccurate scenery/ uniforms/ etc.. from viewers expecting a glitzy Spielburg production, of course they are going to be critical. This movie reminds me more of how the old movies that I loved were made.. not every detail of gore and accuracy of war, but enough to tell the story.. and a good story it is . And this is why I have to give the film makers 5 STARS. This story from the perspective of those who suffered from the russians on the Eastern Front has never been told in english cinema before. Amazing, have to wait 60 years for such a film to finally make it out. 5 stars to finally somehow create such a film given the odds against it happening. German cinema is still suffering from war guilt so such movies are never to be made there, and USA audiences are simply uninterested because it deviates from their easy to know "germans are all bad" plotlines. It does not surprise me that there are alot of critical review, possibly even an orchestrated poor review campaign to diminish this groundbreaking film. I have never seen a movie that attempts or even comes close to telling what happened to the germans and civilians on the Eastern Front in and after WW2. A war movie that actually shows Stalin as the bad guy, and the fate of the germans making their last stand/ the fate of the polish government/ the fate of berlin/ the human cost for the millions of people that have been dehumanized over and over for 60 long years in the west. This is a brave film, a good story, the acting brought out the misery and bleak outlook of the main characters they portrayed, and hopefully a beginning for many more such movies that will at last show the suffering at the hands of the soviet russian red army and reveal the many stories that have remained long hidden from western audiences.

At first the movie comes across as having the makings of a gripping story. The makers of the movie tried to capture the aspects of the period associated with the Russian advance through Europe. Also some good attempts at avoiding the dumbing down of the combatants as presented by a lot of the Hollywood Movies, with perhaps fairly good portrayals of the Russian and German soldiers. However, the outcome of the movie becomes some what obvious. The appearance of a well dressed Gestapo officer in the field with a shaved head and goatie beard sporting a modern designer style long leather coat almost makes the movie satirical.

Again, PLEASE take into consideration the movies other people are reviewing before judging whether or not their opinions on a war movie such as this are valid. I am NOT associated with this movie in ANY way, but it has gotten a VERY bad wrap here in the ratings department. For pity's sake, the highest ranked reviewer here, who only gave this film two stars, has hundreds of reviews on everything from Snuggies to Pencil boxes, and he gave "Rango" - the animated Johnny Depp lizard movie, five-stars and called that thing a masterpiece. I am a military history enthusiast, and if you are, you WILL like this movie. If you're not, then you will not like this movie - it's quite simple.

The reason there are so many bad reviews here is easily explained - this isn't Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers, it's a low-budget independent movie filmed in Michigan and California. For the money they had to work with, I think they did a VERY good job and I was really surprised with what I saw. Most of the cast in this movie are WWII reenactors, so they're not professional actors. That being said, I think they actually did a better job than the "actors" who play most of the main characters. Because the movie relies heavily on reenactors, the equipment and uniforms used are spot-on and very impressive. You'll see G-43s, MP-44s, MG42s, PPSH's and they make good use of a nicely restored Hetzer, a Kettengrad, a Pak 75/40, at least one (maybe two) T-34/85 tanks, several nicely rebuilt Chevy and Ford German trucks, and a lot of little details you don't see in most big budget films because Hollywood doesn't think about those things - but reenactors do.

The plot is actually quite plausible - a British officer and a German officer, both Masons, seperately witness a Soviet war crime and are both being hunted by the Russians while they try to reach the western front. Actually, I thought the idea behind the movie was very good. Although it is hampered by the budget of the movie, the plot line here is probably better than that of Saving Private Ryan. The pros of this one are simple; lots of great authentic hardware, lots of great weapons, and lots of nice vehicles. Yes, the acting could be better, but I've seen much worse acting in many war movies that are considered timeless classics - the Audie Murphy story comes to mind right away. That was a far worse movie in every category except the budget, but it's a "classic" and this movie is panned because the current bar on war movies has been raised very high.

To the people complaining about weapons that aren't recoiling, please, learn something about weapons - this isn't a video game. There is an 88mm cannon in the movie, and no, it doesn't recoil after firing. News flash, an 88mm CANNOT recoil unless you actually fire a live shell out of it! Likewise, the cannons on the T34s and Hetzer used in the movie do not recoil, but again, unless you actually fire a live round through that barrel, it's not going to recoil. This has never been a problem in other movies so I don't know why it's suddenly an issue here. Guns that are hydraulic don't recoil in Saving Private Ryan, or Band of Brothers, or The Pacific, or in any other major war epic I can think of, so why is it such an issue here?

This isn't a bad movie - it isn't the greatest war movie ever, but it's not bad. The biggest problem I had with it, honestly, was that the main German officer didn't even attempt to sound German and had a downright "California" accent. To me, it was problematic that some of the Russians spoke with Russian accents and some didn't, and some of the Germans spoke with German accents and others didn't - how hard is it to fake an accent? Also, as always, they felt it necessary to insert a superfluous lady into the cast as a love interest, which served no purpose and the movie would've been better off without that I think. Over all, however, I would recommend this movie IF YOU ARE A WWII HISTORY BUFF. If you are, you'll like the film, if you're blown away entertained by "Rango," then you're probably not going to like it.

I liked the film...An exciting, historically accurate look at the closing days of WW2 from a unique perspective..... I was very impressed by the quality of the uniforms, weapons, tanks etc.... used in the film.... looks at WW2 from a human side, not just portraying the Germans as Nazis, but as soldiers fighting for each other..... an accurate, enjoyable film that is worth a look.... more than anything, I liked the T-34 tank, the Hetzer tank destroyer, and the hand to hand combat...4 stars...