Most people aren't going to like my review of this film, just like all of my reviews, but I'm not going to sacrifice honesty for garbage. Almost everyone that reads these reviews, myself included, have already seen the film. If your review doesn't agree with their opinion of the same film, they mark your review as not useful.
I wanted so desperately to see this third installment in the Saints and Soldiers franchise and say that Ryan Little learned from the 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 at least 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 are afraid to get dirty (we re-enactors have to pay for our own uniforms, equipment, and blank ammo, which are all very expensive, so we understandably don't want them to get torn or broken to the point where they must be replaced), operating clean, freshly painted vehicles, and speaking lines that are written to be an instructional narrative for the audience so that even those with absolutely no knowledge of the way things were during the war can follow along.
This is truly a re-enactment on film, complete with blow-dryer hair and blank ammunition that doesn't put the slightest mark on wooden barrels at point-blank range!
What actually makes this film potentially slightly better than its predecessor is the filmmaker's attempt to address the issue of the racist policies and prevailing attitudes in the U.S. Army during World War II (and the attitudes in the U.S. toward Americans of African descent). 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 states was mandated by law, and it was something that the majority of European-Americans grew up with culturally. Even if a particular 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 is". What I call "aggressive racism" ran rampant in the 1940s U.S. military, and those that were simply "passive racists" did not go out of their way to oppose aggressive racism. 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.
Aside from that issue, the film strays quite a long way from reality on multiple fronts. After all is said and done, my first impulse was to give it only two stars, 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.
