Customer Reviews

When Trumpets Fade [VHS]

5 star:		(68)
4 star:		(36)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

This movie focuses on a sad chapter in the history of the U.S Army in World War II. The Hurtgen Forest was a deathtrap the could have more or less been bypassed. Certainly a low point in the annals of command, though through no fault of the G.I.s involved. This movie made a point to bring out the frustration and waste experienced by the men of the 28th Inf. Div. in that campaign. I think Spielberg set a new standard for the war movie genre with Saving Private Ryan. So far, When Trumpets Fade is one of the few recent military movies to even come close to that standard. It's a shame that, being a made for cable release, it hasn't been seen by more people. The movie is technically very well done. Uniform and equipment portrayal is excellent. For those reviewers above who find fault with a G.I. wearing his watch cap backwards, try wearing one under an M-1 helmet sometime. It's more comfy turned backwards I assure you. The only thing the movie couldn't represent, being filmed in Hungary, was the true geography of the Kall River Valley, which is much worse than shown on the film. Having hiked the Kall Trail quite a bit, it's a rough walk. Hats off as well to my fellow US military members, stationed in Hungary, that played extras in the film. A very well made movie that they can be proud to have participated in!

The opening scene in this HBO movie is perhaps one of the grittiest and most realistic depictions of the realities of combat ever filmed, at least this side of the first 30 minutes of `Saving Private Ryan'. The viewer is immediately transported into the surreal world of death, decay, and destruction, where the panorama in view is a smoke-seared scene that the young soldiers labor through in the midst of all this horror. In this excellent depiction of General Omar Bradley's ill-fated decision to strike deep into the forbidding terrain of the Hurtigen Forest, accuracy and detail are everywhere one looks. The situation described in the film is quite accurate, and the young cast of mostly unknown actors do a convincing and credible job in conveying the insane circumstances surrounding combat, especially of the lonely, nerve-racking and suddenly murderous nature of isolated units moving cautiously forward through the sometimes impenetrable glades of the forest.

All of the craziness and chaos of battle is well presented, and the story line lends itself to the strong anti-war message of the movie. A friend expressed outrage at the scene in which a platoon leader shoots a deserting private, without realizing it is standard battle procedure. There is nothing uplifting about the scenes and situations the soldiers faced, no over-riding morality or contrived happy ending to dislodge the reality of the horror and futility of all this carnage. If you are looking for a pleasant evening of entertainment, a couple hours of mindless diversion, better find another movie. But if you want to watch a well-made and memorable movie that accurately recounts the events of one of the most ill-conceived and bloodiest series of engagements and firefights in the Allied campaign in France in the late Fall of 1944, and if you don't mind a sobering slap of reality hitting you in the face while you're being drawn into a thoughtful and engaging statement about life and death in the 20th century, this may be for you! Enjoy.

If you watch films about WWII, and maybe even if you haven't, you've seen "Saving Private Ryan" which has apparently become the definitive movie about The Big One....well, if that film as a polar opposite, this is it. "Trumpets" follows a few days in the miserable life of a miserable man, Private Manning, a dogface who is part of the ... disasterous 1944 - 1945 campaign by the American army to seize the Huertgen Forest from the Wehrmacht. Everybody knows about D-Day and the Bulge, while the Huertgen is forgotten, probably because there is no glory in recounting the story of how 30,000 GI's got fed into a human meatgrinder they called "The Death Factory" for no purpose. The Germans never could understand why the American army chose to attack them at their strongest, most easily defensible point, but were more than content to let it happen. WWII histories, most notably Eisenhower's and Bradley's, who oversaw this idiocy, gloss it over, but "Trumpets" rips open the scab and gives a glimpse of what really went down. Unlike "Ryan" which stressed the nobility of the individual soldier even as it attacked the logic of war, "Trumpets" has no heroes. Private Manning is a no-account malingerer who doesn't give a damn about anyone but himself and as a result, keeps surviving while better men get killed off. His officers foolishly assume he is therefore a good soldier, and keep promoting him against his will. Thus he ends up having to break in the replacements soldiers being fed into the grinder, a task which requires empathy, leadership, courage, and patience, so naturally Manning is the worst possible choice. The battle scenes are not especially terrific, but the film does a good job of showing how the stress of combat can make good man bad and bad men worse. Officers lose their nerve, privates run away, everybody is cold, tired, and afraid, and there is always one more mindless "push" into the impregnable defence just over the horizon. The performances, especially by Robert Eldard as Manning and Frank Whaley as his only (sort of) friend, a combat medic, are very good. The film never sentimentalizes the characters, and the scene where Manning brutally tells the basket-case lieutenant "If there's any way I can help you without endangering my own life, I won't hesitate, but I'm not taking a bullet for anybody" is about as far from Tom Hanks' speech at the end of "Ryan" as you are gonna get. The lieutenant, near tears, tells him that's not good enough, whereupon Manning says, "That's as good as it gets." The medic overhears this and tells him, "When you're out there with your guts shot out crying for a medic -- if there's any way I can help you without endangering my own life, I won't hesitate." You wouldn't hear that in a Steven Spielberg movie. "Trumpets" could have been better, but it goes on about a half-hour too long after the story is really resolved, and it does have a bit of a cable-movie feel to it. Other than that, I would recommend it to anyone who wants a taste of some of the fun that followed "The Longest Day."

I am a captain in the United States Army and have studied the battle for the town of Schmidt and the Hurtgen Forest. This movie accurately portrays one of the darkest moments in US Army history in World War II. Inept leadership from the highest levels down to the regimental and battalion level launched the underesourced 28th Infantry Division into a suicidal attack across 13 miles of dense forest. The movies characters very closely showed the horrible confusion and improper tactical decisions made by leaders under fire. The poor weather negated the American advantages of tanks and close air support. The American infantry as shown in the movie were victim to attacks by unrelenting artillery and tanks. In one real case, the American soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 112th Infantry regiment, so unnevered by constant artillery, actually got up and fled their positions in the forest village of Vossenack. This was 400 soldiers, including officers, who up and ran. The movie does the miserable conditions and combat fatigue faced by the soldiers justice. I recommend it.

As my granddad fought in Hürttgen Forest on the german side (he was part of the Waffen-SS)I was very enthusiastic to watch this movie with him (he is now 79). He was very dissappointed because he told me that fighting bach then was much more surreal. The whole day and night thre was intesnse shelling and nobody knew really from where the shooting came. Fog and rain made the whole place to a scenery which seemed to come from another planet. He said he never understood why they wanted this bloody forest. They just had to wait with their 42 and gun them down. And they came again and again. Today you find this information table in Huerrten saying that 55 000 US-soldiers died there and sometimes when they build streets and building they still find human remains from both sides. To make it short: Grandpa gave it 3 stars for trying hard, but having been there he said it was just different

I got this DVD on a recommendation from my father. Both of us poke our noses into WWII history and share our views on the events that take place.

This movie as you may have guessed takes place during the November campaign through the Sigfreid Line, specifically through the Hurtgen forest on the border of Germany and Belgium. Historically, this was one of the bigger follies of WWII costing more lives of the Allied and German soldiers than was needed. It could have been avoided. It was a messy affair much like Market Garden (A Bridge Too Far).

So, does the movie show this? Yes. On a personal level as a soldier makes it from Private to Lieutennant in three days because he was lucky enough to survive that long. It shows how the Repple Deple worked with sending constant replacements in to fill the spots of the dead (though in the film, the replacements knew each other, and this was rare since people were randomly divided up and sent to the front).

Anyway. The movie shows the horrors of not only war, but the absolute horror and hopelessness of being trapped in the Hurtgen forest by your own command because someone seemed to have something to prove somewhere higher up.

This is a coldly realistic, well executed though somewhat low budget movie (I think originally done for HBO). Some people complain about technical points, but they are wrong. The technical realism in here is superb.

One point worth correcting, re: bazookas vs German tanks. The StuGG 3 and PZ IV tanks depicted in the film WERE succeptible to US Bazookas, especially the versions available in 1944. What's more, in the scene where they are attacked, they are hit from behind. Almost every Tank in the world at that time (except maybe a Tiger) was vulnerable to a hit from behind.

And unlike in most WW II movies, the tanks in here looked very, very real. They were not round turreted US M48's or even russian T-34s, but rather very realistic looking mockups which looked almost exactly like real PV IV's. The German cannon (not heavy artillery as another reivewer mistakenly referred to them) were equally realistic and terrifying on impact. It was also refreshing to see (unlike SPR) that they made good use of their Mg42 bow and co-ax guns against US infantry. Tanks are scary, scary things, and that is how they were depicted here.

In fact the SOUND and effect of the shells impacting was the most real I have ever seen in any movie. It was one of the only times I have ever seen shell explosions that brought to mind the real thing.

Some people wont like the fact that not all the U.S. troops are portryaed as cliche heros, willing to jump on a grenade to save their buddies. These people have obviously never been in the military.

The military is full of ordinary people, (especially during a time of draft) There is the same proportion of true heros as in real life, that is to say, very few. Under good leadership and the right circumstances, a good esprit de corps can develop where many more rise to the occasion. The Battle of the Hurtgen, while it had it's share of heroes on both sides, was not one of these occasions. It was a slaughter of US troops in which morale reached the breaking point (the only US deserter shot in the war, Eddie Slovak, fled from this battle). Read some of the actual accounts (widely available online, google Hurtgen forst) and you can easily grasp the horror and futility of this immense battle.

Dont like the idea of Ron Eldards character looking out for number one (at least some of the time)? Or the incompetent, detatched senior officers who had no imagination or idea what to do other than send troops into the meat grinder over and over?

Well, stick your head in the sand like an Ostrich, because that is how war is sometimes. Try to imagine yourself facing near certain death in an obviously bungled military operation, with idiots in charge, seemingly determined to feed you to the lions.

I found the technical realism and detail superb, the acting was goood, and the writing was excellent. I think it hits home more if you have ever been in the military. Yes, it was 1944, but people cursed then too. People could be just as cynical as today, especially people on the front lines. Trust me. When do you think terms like SNAFU and FUBAR were coined? The scenery (shot in Eastern Europe) reminded me of the sinister Black Forest in Bavaria where I was stationed in the Army.

The German soldiers were a good combination of scary veterans and hapless draftees, not just the creepy losers as in SPR. The U.S. replacements were very accurately depicted, and their transformation from innocence to desperation, as the realization of the true horror of their circumstances dawns on them, is a true testimetn to war.

If you liked this directors other films, such as the underrated Hamburger Hill, you will like this. If you prefer John Wayne movies where all Americans are super hero good guys, you'll hate it.

This is a pretty decent look at the battle for the Huertgen Forest, otherwise known as the "forgotten front". This is one of those episodes that doesn't find frequent mention in the history books, but strangely it wound up with its own movie.

When I watched this, I couldn't help being reminded of the Vietnam flick "Platoon." The emphasis here is on showing the gritty, unglamorous side of infantry combat, and it's well done. Heroism, cowardice, mud, blood and fratricide are all featured in this story of a scared G.I. who's determined to survive the war at any cost, even if it means the loss of his honor.

The story opens with a young private, brand new to the war, who is the sole survivor after his platoon attacks a German position and is wiped out. His survival is qualification enough to earn him a promotion to sergeant, and not long after, to lieutenant. He wants neither. All he wants to do is survive at any cost, and he doesn't care what his superiors or subordinates think about it.

The action scenes are generally believable and well done, even if some of the mock-ups of the German tanks aren't. Several of the scenes are particularly intense and bloody, a little reminiscent of Private Ryan, but not to the same degree of utter carnage. In general I thought the acting was okay, but seeing Dwight Yoakam as a light colonel was a little surreal for me. The ending, in my humble opinion, was a little corny, and didn't do justice to the rest of the movie, which otherwise might have rated four stars instead of just three. Still, it's definitely worth watching for anyone who likes war flicks.

This movie isn't going to appeal to everybody because it is a dark and sad movie. I like this movie because it doesn't go into the rah-rah [stuff] that many war movies gets into. You know the scene with the inspirational speech about patriotism, glory and mom's apple pie with the Battle Hymn of the Republic playing as background music. There are some cheesy moments, but every movie has them and these moments don't affect the rest of the movie which is good.

As for realism, well I never experienced shellfire or taken a round in the gut so I won't say it is or isn't.

Historically, it should be pointed out that the 28th Infantry Division had one of the worst and unluckiest combat records in WWII and for that earned the nickname "Bucket of Blood". The 28th didn't get better until the Army removed the ineffective division commander and got some combat veterans who knew their stuff.

If you read your history books, cowardly officers and men were common place at that point in the war because the US Army was running out of trained infantry--they allocated too many men to anti-tank, AA and HQ units so they ended up scraping the bottom of the barrel--hence the fat guy with glasses and the dumb stuff like bunching up in an artillery attack.

It seems to me that a lot of people who hate this movie are upset because it doesn't portray the US Army as a perfect, noble organization made up of brave, competenent people instead of what it really is, an organization made of humans: some good, some bad, some incompetent and unlucky.

This is truly a soldier's film, capturing in a microcosm of film everything which is horrible about war, from the disdain of the field grade officers whose lives aren't in danger, to the horrific decisions and life that the soldiers endured. A prior reviewer explained the inability to capture the reality of the bridge scene, especially given the budget of this film. It certainly caputures everything else about being a soldier and this insane expenditure of men's lives for no reasonable purpose.

As for the language, it's very mild by soldier standards. I spent a year in Vietnam, and the language we used was far worse, and used in almost every sentence. I doubt profanity emerged first with the Vietnam war, and it's probably been inherent in warriors for thousands of years.

The story itself focuse on a private who has to make an almost impossible decision at the beginning of the film, killing the only other survivor of his platoon, to prevent the man from suffering. It represents every impossible decision which soldiers have been faced with for centuries. War is not fought by civilized values, and this film displays that reality, and why soldier don't say much about what they did in wars.

The experiences harden the private, and make him willing to do virtually anything to escape the madness which was trying to advance through this forest, but he's such a good soldier that he keeps getting promoted, as he keeps surviving, despite his anti-authoritarian attitude and contempt for officers, the Army, and most things.

I really identified with this film. Unlike Saving Private Ryan, it doesn't have the huge flaw of a caricature (the corporal clerk who wastes so much time in that film). Everyone in When Trumpets Fade is very real. The horrors of combat itself are very well done, and the general horror of that campaign are well displayed. We see the insanity of attacking into ranged artillery fire. We see the indifference of higher officers who don't care what is impossible, as they simply pass on insane orders of their superiors to their subordinates, who are the ones who will die.

It's as good as any war film I've ever seen. Only a WWII veteran of that battle could comment on certain aspects of the film. I noted one reviewer thought it was absurd that a whistle was used to start an advance. I'm not so sure. Often the military does things which make no sense.

As a war veteran, however, I found the film virtually flawless, in what it displays about war, and about soldiers, and from what I know about that battle, it does a great job of generally capturing the horrors of the Hurtgen Forest.