Stephen Muzz Murray
Passchendaele is a decent World War One film, one of the best out there and there's not too many it has minor flaws but does the job brilliantly. Paul Gross has done a great job acting in and directing this film. Some may be put off by the love story but for me this just reinforces and shows the losses of many people during this time period and era. Passchendaele shows how many people who once lived to together as neighbors are divided by stupid things like family nationality and false loyalty and bad promises of adventure and glory. The love story isn't for everyone but wow many girlfriends and wives lost partners and how many young men never came home to true love or had a chance to live full lives? This film does get you thinking!Of course this is no Band Of Brothers in terms of scale (I know that's World War Two) but Paul Gross has done extremely well acting and directly. I find this film to be a good tribute to his Grandfather and to those who lost something because of World War One.The film is low budget however this doesn't really show to be honest and this is a fitting tribute and good story! With regards to the low budget the battle scenes could have been bigger and better but this is by no means a bad film.The acting and casting is spot on and this film really does show the stupid ill placed passion and faulted logic of young people in this era and, it shows the pressure many had to go through and be forced to fight for freedom not knowing what the loses and costs would be. World War One was a slaughter and waste of millions of lives and the deaths of certain characters and the gruesome way they die shows this war was not the fairy tale adventures many painted it to be at the start. Among all the blood and slaughter there is a story and the film does well to reflect and show not everyone fighting was a murderer or cold blooded killer and many just wanted it to end. We need more World War One films like this to teach young people the truths and to keep history alive so we don't make the same mistakes again.
juneebuggy
Paul Gross wrote, directed and stars in this ambitious (yet still very CBC feeling) epic, following the exploits of the Canadian soldiers who fought in one of the key battles of World War 1 in 1917. The story follows Gross as a troubled veteran, his nurse girlfriend and a naïve boy who intersect first in Alberta and then through the bloody battle of Passchendaele.You can just tell that Paul Gross put his heart and soul into this and I really, really wanted to be impressed, finally getting the Canadian side of events after so many WW1 movies that just deal with the American or British. Unfortunately though its not great.Yeah it has its moments, it's visually impressive, the battle scenes are very well done, the trench warfare, the mud, the rain, the carnage and I got very caught up in the ending despite myself but this is also melodramatic at times, kinda choppy and (as I said) has a made for TV feel despite the big budget. Guys will be disappointed too because for the most part this is a love story.Still I am haunted by the ending, that final shot of the wooden cross in Calgary with the Bow river in the background infused with the white stone graves in France, beautiful. 11/16/14
tfmj-1
What a missed opportunity. This could have been a great anti war film but it turns out to be a Canadian Pearl Harbor (Michael Bay's that is) drama with an overblown love story and sometimes terrible dialogs. I could not identify with or care about any of the characters. The battle scenes try to evoke a Saving Private Ryan feeling but they look terribly staged. Thank God it ends after about 2 hours and does not drag on for another hour. If you really want to watch an interesting and compelling movie about the horrors of the Great War I do recommend "All Quiet on the Western Front" (the original as well as the remake) or the Australian production "Gallipoli".
Rusty Fondleberg
This movie was pretty dreadful. And I am saying this as a Canadian, a very patriotic one at that. Our valor at war which is often overlooked and under appreciated should indeed be celebrated and respected however this film did very little to promote any thing much more than blatantly over the top patriotism. The love story is uninteresting and forgettable. The actors are poorly cast and their dialogue is poorly written. With so much to work with and with such a key historic moment such as Passchendaele it is astounding to me that this is the best they could do. Again the fight scenes were alright although not very realistic. Suffice to say this movie is pretty boring and poorly done. I recommend giving it a skip.***/10
AD
