It shaped films to come

Rating: Null/10 (19 September 2001)

"All Quiet on the Western Front" is a key film in the subject of war films. It had one of the biggest budgets of that time ($1.25 million) and it must have been quite risky for Hollywood seeing as how it was an anti-war film. What I love most about the film is that it knows the basic rule for making really good movies and that is not how many body parts are left on the field, but what the movie does is let you imagine what's goin on, like how they were being shelled in the bunker and some of them went mad. It's like the so many horror movies today that believe by simply startlying you, they scare you, and they build no suspense. This movie lets you imagine a good portion of what the soldiers are going through, but build a great amount of suspense by havinf so much lead up to it. Everyone is spectacular in their performances, and the last moments of the film are sad and painful. I think that the last shot is as great as it's title, the last shot probably had a profound effect on how movies with messages were to be made, as symbolic and less literal. A truly powerful, timeless film.