Comeuppance Reviews Set during 1942-43 during the prime years of World War II, Battle Force tells many separate tales, but the main two concern Maj. Mannfred Roland (Keach), a Nazi who has fallen in love with a Jewish actress, Annelise Ackermann (Eggar). The fate of their relationship is in limbo as Roland fights in North Africa and can't be at home in Germany to protect her from the evil Nazis (by comparison, he's a "good" Nazi). The other story tells the tale of Gen. Foster of the U.S. Army (Fonda). His son John (Lovelock) is something of a screw-up who can't please his demanding father. So he follows in his footsteps and enlists in the Army. The whole film is narrated by Orson Welles and features a lot of stock footage of the war. Will this truly be "The Biggest Battle" of them all? When we originally came across the Continental big-box VHS of this movie, how could we resist it: it's called Battle Force, and the tagline screams "THE MOST AWESOME BATTLE EVER SEEN!" Plus look at the cast. It's insane. And we didn't even have room to mention Orson Welles as the Narrator . How could it lose, right? Well...it's not that this movie is bad, really, but it's extremely stodgy and old-fashioned. It seems like the type of Sunday afternoon programmer your grandparents might watch to while away a rainy day. Yes, there is some war action, including some shooting and explosions (giving credit where credit is due, they're some quality blow-ups), but somehow it's not really enough. There are way too many cooks in this broth. There's a ridiculous amount of characters, plus the stock footage and narration, and the result is pretty much a jumble. Which, unfortunately, is not terribly engaging to the audience.We generally love Umberto Lenzi. We think he's great, but his war movie output (that we've seen, anyway) doesn't seem to rival his poliziotteschi work like Violent Protection (1976) or his classic exploitation horror stuff like Cannibal Ferox (1981), Eaten Alive (1980) or Nightmare City (1980) - not to mention his excellent giallo period of the 1970's. I wonder what Henry Fonda would think if he knew he was working under the demented genius who created the above titles? Regardless, a direct parallel can be made here: just as the equally-staid WWII drama The Second Victory (1987) is put out by AIP, who is normally known for much wilder and more entertaining fare, so is the case here with the rest of Umberto Lenzi's work. Why both AIP and Lenzi decided to "go boring" for their WWII jaunts is an interesting coincidence indeed.The movie is well-directed by Lenzi, and it is ambitious and expansive, but there's no humor whatsoever, and it all comes off as flat and uninvolving. It's all well and good to play "spot the star" but that's not really a coherent way to make a movie. Perhaps sensing this, we must quote the writer of the back of the VHS box. At the very end of a multi-paragraph description, the final pitch to rent or buy this movie to a potential buyer or renter is this: "Fans of tank warfare will appreciate the large numbers of tanks and other armored vehicles employed in the well-choreographed battle sequences. The military hardware in the film is quite elaborate, including a "Big Bertha" railroad gun." And that's it. That's the capper. It seems this movie would be the perfect Christmas gift to that member of your family who inevitably is a "fan of tank warfare". And just the words "Big Bertha" are enough to pique our interest.In the end, it seems only die-hard fans of any of the personalities involved with this project would get much out of Battle Force.For more action insanity, please visit: www.comeuppancereviews.com

The_Void I'm not a fan of war films to say the least and if I'm going to sit down and watch one, there generally has to be a real good reason for doing so. Despite the fact that Battle Force is a largely unknown and inconsequential war film from the late seventies; I actually did have several good reasons for seeing it. Anything directed by Umberto Lenzi is automatically worth watching considering all the great cult films he has delivered; from some of the best Giallo's to the very best of the Polizi genre, and adding to that is absolutely mouth-watering cast. However, in spite of those things; this is still a highly disappointing and really rather rubbish movie. The plot is rather confusing and doesn't make much sense and mainly focuses on two families of different nationalities during World War Two. However, we also focus on the actual war itself and various battles that the characters are involved in and this all gets mingled in with the stories of the families...The main problem with this film is that it tries to do too much and the one hundred minute running time is simply not long enough for it to do it all in (although I am thankful that the film didn't last for longer!). I don't really know how credible Umberto Lenzi was as a director in 1978 (probably more credible than he was in the eighties), but somehow he has managed to get his hands on a magnificent cast chequered with stars - and not just cult stars! Big names such as John Huston, Henry Fonda and Orson Welles have roles alongside cult stars such as Ray Lovelock, Samantha Eggar, Evelyn Stewart, Stacy Keach, Helmut Berger and Edwige Fenech (who really doesn't appear for long enough). This cast is all well and good but unfortunately it's wasted. The plot lacks any sort of direction and the film might actually have been better as an anthology style movie with a few different but focused stories. The war scenes look extremely cheap (the budget was probably spent on paying stars' wages) and that also brings the film down, although there is plenty of action. Overall, this did actually have the potential to be a masterpiece; but to say the least, it isn't! Recommended for its cult value only.

Michael A. Martinez I don't understand how Luciano Martino and Mino Loy were able to raise the money to hire so many big-name actors of the time (such as Orson Welles, John Huston, Henry Fonda, and Samantha Eggar) but they still had to rely on plentiful stock footage from earlier war movies like THE BATTLE OF EL ALAMEIN and LEGION OF THE DAMNED. Umberto Lenzi's directing is good as usual, with lots of emphasis placed on the well-edited action scenes. The budget for such scenes seems quite minimal however, with a lot of the same actors dying over and over again, and a few really shoddy toy tanks exploding (though a few shots of these tanks were lifted from other movies).As for the cast, just about everybody that had anything to do with the Italian movie industry shows up somewhere in the movie, from familiar dubbing voice Robert Spafford as Patton to future director Michele Soavi as Fonda's dead son. The photography and music are all top notch, yet this movie has gotten ad reviews accross the board. Why? Because it has little or no plot to speak of. There are so many characters and so much going on in the film that it has no focus or direction. Eggar's character has no point in the movie other than she makes it slightly longer, and Edwige Fenech gets one lousy scene as a French prostitute. Eventually, most of the actors end up in Africa fighting on one side or the other and (surprise!) the Germans lose and all the German characters die, the end. But who goes to watch a good old-fashioned war movie for the plot anyway? There's plenty to enjoy if you like watching German soldiers lying in the road pretending to be dead so they can shoot the American soldiers that run up to help them. It also contains a number of memorable scenes like when Stacy Keach gets lost in the desert and falls over after about 1 minute of walking, and a very goofy case of bad communication when Ray Lovelock attempts to call up his father and the two barely manage to get through even a few words...The ending really comes out of nowhere though, but it's made especially funny as John Huston seems to just get bored of the movie and walk off saying "seeya around" right into the camera! Definitely not a movie to miss...for fans of the genre.

emm For a low-budget movie set during World War II, it does have a rough and violent edge. Above all, BATTLE FORCE surrenders to a non-existent plot and storyline that's been duped hundreds of times repeatedly. Don't expect much here as there's no specific meaning. Explosions and body counts are nothing new! Adding to the troop casulty count is of Orson Welles' annoying and interrupting narration, making it feel like a made-for-television documentary. War movies are instant classics in the grade "A" Hollywood circuit, and SAVING PRIVATE RYAN triumphs realism today. Despite a fairly good replica of those WW2 days, BATTLE FORCE is another run-of-the-mill production without enough substance. Anyone who grew up watching Hollywood war dramas in their lifetimes probably avoided this one while history was made.