Lovesusti
The Worst Film Ever
Tymon Sutton
The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.
Rexanne
It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny
nickboldrini
Although remade, the original packs a punch the remake doesn't, mainly because it being made in black and white and when it was made giving it an authenticity that is hard to replicate. The characters are well sculpted and acted, and he message resonate down the ages, with the failure to heed it in WWII adding to its strength
arfdawg-1
Proof that Hollywood was making left wing anti war propaganda since it's birth.The movie has gotten stellar reviews but rankly, it's dated. The exposition is overly dramatic and heavy handed as is the direction.Plus the young soldiers all have freaking Brooklyn accents! They are supposed to be German! A movie like this would never make money today and it would get summarily panned.If you want to see a great war film, try Hacksaw Ridge or Saving Private Ryan.
Chaitanya Gck Gurrala
This movie made me realize that what I thought of war till now is just 10% of the reality. This is a WW1 film which explicitly shows the in and out of War. At that time, the teachers persuade the students to get enlisted into the army. Getting excited by the words of the old teacher all the students got into the army expecting a beautiful army life. After they have entered the fields, they realized the real situation and felt that it is better back in school. But, now these innocent guys got into the army, they have to face the enemy. It shows the fear of these new recruits and the real difficulties they face. They began to see their friends in front of their eyes.This makes them feel to go back home. These new people, even don't know that even the army people suffer from hunger. They really expected a good life, but the reality turns out to be exactly the opposite. At one point of time, they feel like they are just living to die. Paul( Hero ) kills a man in protecting himself and later cries that he didn't actually wanted to kill. This shows the innocence. And later when he goes home on leave, he sees the same teacher persuading the minds of the young students to join the Army. This makes him angry and tells the truth and called by the students as a coward. He feels that he doesn't belong to home anymore and returns to the Army and eventually dies.
Ross622
Lewis Milestone's adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's " All Quiet on the Western Front" was definitely a better film on his military resume than the flawed but still good Pork Chop Hill (1959). The movie is a character study of a young man named Paul Baumer (played by Lew Ayres in an Oscar snubbed performance) who is in college during the start of the film with some classmates of his and a teacher who convinces them to serve in World War I and that "It is a wonderful thing to die for your country, which is the heroic thing to do". Then as soon as Paul persuades his friends to enlist and go off to war they begin to realize that killing people isn't as fun as they previously thought to which they go from a pro-war to an anti-war stance. Although I disagree with the film's point of view I think that is a great thing for people to serve their own country, and the great thing about movies is that people can tell a story from a certain perspective. The movie compares to some of the greatest war films of all time for example Platoon (1986), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Patton (1970), The Deer Hunter (1978), and The Hurt Locker (2009). Even though the war films that I just listed take place in different wars that we have been involved in, the thing that made me love the movie a whole lot more was reading the novel because it gave me a better understanding of what the film was about and the emotions of the characters, which is why in the film's case it is great on so many levels even the storytelling, acting, photography, and writing, etc. Also these are reasons why I personally think that the movie should received more Oscars and nominations that it ended up receiving at the 3rd Oscars ceremony.
