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Passchendaele (NSF56K? Historians)
Cristoval
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So a little Canadian movie came out this Friday which chronicles the love between Paul Gross and how awesome he is, set upon the backdrop of the Canadian army's struggle to control the town of Passchendaele against Imperial German troops during WWI.
This movie has been severely hyped in Canada (at least in the west) for some time. Mostly because Canada gets little more than a footnote mention in World War movies, but also because WWI usually treated as the redheaded stepchild of the great wars, being viewed as "...a great stepping stone for the franchise, while the sequel really fleshed out the German characters while boasting an even greater special effects budget."
While it's true that WWII sports an excellent cast of characters and wam bam CGI, it truly lacks the heart of it's predecessor. Pampered soldiers tourist-ing around the panoramic European countryside have nothing on the shit that WWI vets had to go through. Mainly:
Trenches
Too tired and cold to dig your own trench? Stick around long enough and luckily the enemy artillery will do it for you!
Foot Rot
If the Germans didn't get to you first, your body's shitty immune system would. Brought on by spending weeks at a time knee deep in mud and water, your body would eventually say "eff your toes", get itself infected and turn gain greene.
Mustard Gas
Sick of the quick and painless manner of obliterating their enemies with canon fire, the Germans turned to instead burning their insides slowly with this highly toxic gas. Pictured above is the enemy, maybe, I don't know! Everything is so god damned brown!
Unfortunately most of the cast did not reprise their roles in WWII, which vouched instead for fresh young faces and an even more preposterous enemy.
However, this movie is not about those things. It's about this handsome fucker
and how he single highhandedly won the Canadians the Third battle of Ypres by staring down the Germans and making them cry, obviously now seeing the error of their ways.
WARNING! A bunch of opinions and stuff:
I have to say I was looking forward to this movie for some time due to the points above, hoping to see two hours worth of hardcore trench action. What we got however was an actors love letter to himself and maybe 10 minutes worth of an actual history lesson.
The movie basically takes pages from the "How not to make a Historically Accurate War Movie, by Micheal Bay" and then writes it's own chapters in the back. Paul Gross (Writer, Producer, Director, Star) did what everyone was warning him not to do and turned this thing into 2 hours of the most boring and unauthentic romance story ever put to screen, far worse than that Micheal Bay take on Dubbya Dubbya Two.
But that is not it's main problem (inane dialogue being a close second). The problem is Paul Gross desperately wants to tell an authentic Canadian War tale, however seemingly suffers from Chuck Norris syndrome and doesn't want to come across as pansy Canadian Storm Trooper who can be brought down by such trivial things as bullets and mortar rounds. Unlike most war movies there is absolutely no sense of danger, as he spends most of the time playing Superman and deflecting explosions with his chest (I think he gets hit at least 5 times, escaping only with sexy looking scars). Even as his squad gets mowed he still manages to give a smug wink and tell a tasteless joke about "losing your head" on the battlefield. No lie. Near the end he even compares himself to Jesus in one of the most stupidly manipulative scenes this side of Saving Private Ryan. For a movie named after one of the bloodiest struggles for our army during WWI, I was surprised to find that Passchendaele only get's a brief mention near the end: A doctor/general/guy simply stating, "by the way, we took Passchendaele (fist pump)".
The film does have it's moments, mostly when he or his love interest aren't on screen. The best lines come from a French Canadian dude who doesn't appear until the last 20 minutes, but I'm pretty sure he had to wrestle Paul Gross for those as he probably didn't want any actors taking all the attention away from him. Plus I guess when there is actual war going down that's cool too, although it certainly doesn't save the movie.
BUT ANYWAY!
TL;DR - Stupid war movie ruined by Canada's insistence on not making something that isn't complete fucking bore. Paul Gross is the next Jesus.
Sad thing is that this movie will probably be given a bunch of awards simply for the fact that it's the only "big budget" Canadian movie to come out this year, added to the fact that it panders to our patriotism of WWI. The good part is that they will be Canadian awards and we all know that those don't mean shit.
So my fellow Canadians, have you all done your patriotic duty to go watch whatever our local talent puts to screen and shed a tear for our fallen soldiers/boredom?
Cristoval on
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The Germans had machine guns set up in rows of five and had no man on them. The vibration of the gun firing made it turn and they put bolts on either side so it was contained in an arc of fire. Just overlap these arcs and have one guy with five pieces of rope attached to the belt feed and firing catches and they just mowed us down.
Really horrifying.
Also reading about this one time when the British employed a creeping barrage assault (which is why we were mostly walking across no mans land, because the barrage had to be timed to walking speed) and it just lands on the Brits and wipes em out except for like ten guys. And they get to the German trench and clear out a 300ft long section, hand to hand combat with two guys acting as 'bombers' though this basically means grenadiers. Killed about 200 German troops on their own because it was essentially a long narrow corridor once you get inside the trench.
Military?
XBox LIVE: Bogestrom | Destiny
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They have a word for us
They call us Stormtroopers
Maybe if they had more maple syrup at Gallipoli, it would've gone better?
Paul Gross, though? Pffft fuck him.
... hmmm, wiki tells me that is not quite accurate. Carry on.
Post or Pre tank?
There need to be more movies about WWI. Everything I learned about it I learned in middle school
Secret Satan
Edit: Paul Gross is a Canadian Actor/Director/Dude guy who is most prominently known for his character Benton Frase in the Canadian television show "Due South". I never watched it, but apparently it was pretty alright. He also sort of looks like Joaquin Pheonix without the lip scar, but is not as awesome.
It's supposedly not bad, but a little low-budget and dated. I should watch it one day.
I really like him, actually. He was the lead in Slings and Arrows, one of my favorite TV shows, and he does a brilliant job. I'm a little sorry to hear that he fucks this up so badly. I had a lot of faith.
I have yet to see this movie, and doubt I will until I can see it in the states.
Hamlet will be Hamlet
An ineffable tragedy of the human spirit that still resonates, even today.
It was a pretty good movie if I remember correctly.
Having been exposed to CS gas before, I kind of have an idea, and well, shit man.
We own the DVDs and I had to stop Leanna because she has a paper to work on.
The actual battle was one of those 300 type tactics vs overwhelming odds battles and showed off how SUPER TOUGH we Canadians are because no Americans could hold it because they were made of lesser stuff.
I made a TD for iphone and windows phone!
Which is kinda impressive, when you consider that it was something like a six week journey by ship to get to fucknowhere, Belgium from the far side of the world.
New Zealanders are some weird bastards. The Maori are cool, but god damn kiwis can't be straight forward for shit.
Okay, maybe just a wee bit exaggerated. But the movie is truly less about the battle for Passchendaele and moreso the love that dare not speak it's name between a shell shocked soldier and a German nurse. If you want to see some cool WWI warfare just walk in during the last 15 minutes, because that's about all you are going to be getting.
Frick, it's been a while since I've seen All Quite on The Western Front (made us watch it in school), should probably do that up again sometime...
uuuugh
good movie maybe, being forced to watch it around seven times in a compulsory english class - not good at all.
Fishman: Wikipedia says 3,596 new zealanders killed in the whole battle, and another site says our population was about a quarter of what it is today (4 million), so that's about .35%.
Being patriotic about WW1 seems so stupid to me, it was a perfect example of people who had barely anything to do with the causes of a war fighting it. WW2 makes sense to me, the nazis did some pretty nasty shit and hitler was blatantly expansionist and needed to be stopped, but WW1 was just stupid. Only good thing that came out of it for us was the New Zealand military refusing to serve under English officers.
Maori battalion in WW2 (especially monte cassino), that is some impressive shit though. Taking any ground, especially ruins from Fallschirmjaeger (parachute) units that fought in stalingrad while fighting up a mountain... fuck that.
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Learn something new about WW2 everyday.
Yeah, I always thought that stat was a bit dodgy. 2700 of those deaths occured in one day, but I've never been able to locate an accurate population stat for WW1 ever. I haven't been able to verify it, but I think it's based on a count of Pakeha, so didn't count the dirty grass-skirt dark skinned pagans the british colonials had spent the last 60 years stealing land from. Retrospective population counts tend to have a better estimation of those, but I doubt there's an accurate total anywhere.
The worst thing is that the bombing made things even worse militarily.
Maori Battalion, crazy motherfuckers. Sort of similar to the tuskegee airmen, the maori battalion were partly trying to prove that they could fight just as well as whiteys. From the wiki: 3,500 joined the 28th Maori Battalion. Of those, 655 died, and 1,949 were wounded or taken prisoner. 75% casualty rate, that is ridiculous.
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Not to mention the Gurkhas.
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Seriously. No self-respecting white battallion would stand for that.
Gallipoli, 1916.
Wellington Regiment summits Chunuk Bair with 760 men.
One day later, they come down. 711 are casualties. That doesn't even count the poor bastards who didn't make it to the top in the first place.
They fired their rifles until the wood of the rifle stocks was too hot to touch. Then they'd pick up the rifles of the guys who were dying next to them until that got too hot to touch. When the Turks got up to the trenches the fighting continued with the bayonet.
WW1 is fucked up.
Well wait. We learned about the founding of Canada, the Red River Rebellion (I went to Batosche!), and later our roles in World War 1 & 2. The only other encounter I'd heard about was Vimy Ridge; I hadn't heard about Passchendaele until I heard about this movie.