Saving Private Ellison

Rating: 6/10 (16 March 2015)

In the push into Nazi Germany in the closing stages of WWII, a battle-hardened tank crew come up against fanatical opposition. In addition, a rookie soldier is added to their crew and has to be educated in the ways of war. There is grit and rawness here, and the Allies are shown to be capable of brutality, shading the moral tones. The battle scenes are tense and dirty and ring with authenticity. Brad Pitt is magnetic as the leader trying to save his men while keeping as much of a lid on their excesses as possible. The film's flaw is that it shows the men not so much as soldiers, or even heroes, but as supermen, cutting through SS the way Aragorn cuts through Orcs. The ingénue Ellison gets to share a moment with a German civilian who is then conveniently, plot-wise, dispensed with in an air raid, though quite who is bombing who isn't clear. The crude moment seems forced in order to have Ellison be told "This is war!" This is a decent if not great film. If they'd made it 50 years ago it would have starred John Wayne.