Flawed epic that has stolen 3 hours of my life.

Rating: 2/10 (3 August 2008)

Just finished viewing this long film with the mega star cast. Military historians may relish every minute of this WW2 drama, but this film left me cold, bored and totally unengaged.
As there are so many strands and so many characters the overall narrative is completely disjointed. We have a series of protagonists who each get their obligatory 2 lines of dialogue before cutting to the next sequence.
The actors were not at fault - and one wonders why such big names from the Hollywood pantheon like Olivier and Redford agreed to be cast as characters with very 'little meat to their bones' so to speak. Contrary to the praise Goldman received for writing this film - in my view he's actually written a big turkey. The poor box office receipts would tally with this view. The public know a bad 'un when they see it!
A shorter running time, a stronger point-of-view narrative from say Bogarde's character General Browning, would have made this film far more effective. It seems that Attenborough was so keen to get his historical facts right, that he forgot to think of the needs of film lovers and cinema-goers. The only way this film could have succeeded was as a drama-documentary.
Overly ambitious project, obsessed with the details of the key events, renders this a forgettable war pic.
If you ever get the chance try and see the rarely seen and vastly under-rated 'All Quiet On The Western Front' starring Richard Thomas and Ian Holm. Beautifully structured story, with excellent cinematography and a strong central performance,makes this, for me, the best anti-war film ever made.