Not the film I longed to see...

Rating: 6/10 (8 February 2009)

This was a flick I liked, it did not make justice to the much greater film it could have been. Well, the film was beautifully photographed with the column of soldiers marching in the snow. The "American" control post in the forest and the ditch full of dead GIs was a haunting idea, but surely they also appear in the John Katzenbach novel the film is based upon.
Carrying out a court-martial to hide something from the Germans was an ingenious idea, but this was diminished by giving the Colonels McNamara and Visser only limited screen time. They do little to maintain Lt. Hart's illusion of a fair and well-meant court-martial, and if he wasn't such a half-baked and sissy-like soldier he would have found out much sooner how fishy the whole thing is. But he prefers to play along the game.