Search - Passchendaele on DVD

A Hallmark Movie that Happens to Have Combat Scenes

T. Cole | 05/17/2010

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Like many of the reviewers, I hope to someday see a comprehensive WWI movie. This is not it.



I felt like I spent two hours watching a Hallmark Movie set in Canada that just happened to be during the WWI time period, only to watch 20 minutes of tepid combat footage.



The "making-of" documentary said this was going to be shown to Canadian school kids. That's too bad. The only thing they'll learn about combat is that it is muddy, bloody and one must keep his matches dry. The latter was actually a good detail thrown into the film. If the whole movie had been about trench life, then there would have been more such insights.



The main character and his love were trite and hackneyed. A bitter, anti-hero falls deeply in love with Florence Nightengale, who happens to have a dark secret that makes her a black sheep.



The combat would have been well done if it wasn't so subservient to the greater love story. I thought that the love story would end at the front lines, but inexplicably, and quite implausibly, it follows to the end. The love making scene was laughable (bombs going off in the distance ala Linda Lovelace?). Why do modern war films try and insert sexual content into the grimiest, dirtiest context (as in Rachel Weisz and "Enemy at the Gates")? The prostitute scene in the original "All Quiet on the Western Front" was more realistic.



I'll keep waiting for a better film that is actually about WWI. Don't waste your money on this one."