Like two completely separate movies mixed together

Rating: 5/10 (25 November 2016)

This movie is a painfully average picture filled with great battle scenes. The acting is fine. Hugo Weaving does a great job as the drunk a**hole dad and everyone else is passable (except maybe those cringy child actors who cant fake a hit to save their lives). The lighting is horrible. It's painfully obvious that every non-battle scene has a sh*tty looking bright filter put on top of them all, which really makes no sense. Why would you make the film seem so fake when all the battlefield scenes are made to seem extremely realistic? Let's not forget how cheesy the story is too. It's the clichéd awkward boy meets cute girl, they fall in love, and then their plot is completely dropped from the story just like every single other subplot in the film. The film makes a huge jump from our hero surviving the threat of getting court martialed by the meany military men to straight into battle. I mean I was thankful that we got to finally leave the godawful bootcamp sequence(which basically is a much worse version of Full Metal Jacket's bootcamp complete with Vince Vaugn doing the most unconvincing job of a drill instructor I think I have ever seen in a big budget movie) but the jump completely slices out every part of the story that it had just created and never reintroduces them back into the movie. Now compare the clichéd beginning of this movie (as well as the clichéd "super patriot" ending) to the visceral and brutal battle scenes. It's as if this movie has two different directors. One is the real Mel Gibson, who basically sh*ts blood, guts, and mutilation on the screen for an incredible hour, and the other is Mel Gibson who lost his testicles and uses cable. Basically the film boils down to this (if I haven't already made this blatantly obvious). Battle scenes (besides the terrible CGI boats and cannons)= good. Dialogue, characters, and the beginning and end of the film = bad. Overall the film isn't as terrible as I am making it sound, but lets end this circle jerk of calling this the best war movie since Saving Private Ryan. This movie isn't even the best war movie of the past few years. If you want to see what this movie should have been go watch The Pacific. 6/10 don't waste your money unless you just really love war movies.