An average movie

Back in the 90's, John Dahl made some rather amazing and underrated film noirs and since then, I have tried to check out all his movies. This time, he actually tried a totally different genre, the war drama and the end result was not bad at all but I can't say it was really mind-blowing either. I don’t know, all the ingredients were there to make a decent flicks, there were some pretty good actors (Benjamin Bratt, James Franco, Sam Worthington, Joseph Fiennes, Logan Marshall-Green, Connie Nielsen) who delivered some decent performances and the story was quite interesting. Unfortunately, somehow, the movie never really took off and never got really inspiring or fascinating. It is probably due to the fact that none of the characters were really interesting which was rather surprising from John Dahl. Indeed, in his previous movies such as ‘Kill me again’, ‘Red Rock West’ , ‘The Last Seduction’ or ‘Rounders’, even though the plot was not always really strong, the characters were always rather murky and quite compelling to watch. Here, they were rather bland and stereotypical. Still, in spite of its flaws, it remains a well made war drama and I think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

6/10