Mediocre And Forgettable

Rating: 3/10 (16 October 2016)

Again, there are good and bad war movies. This one is rather poor. Seems to be, all the elements of a great war movie are here - stellar cast, great camera work, excellent and meticulous approach to details and superb music. Why does it then fall flat? The mere idea is nothing new - a bio of a great war general, this time, Patton, throughout his ordeals and victories in Africa and then Italy and then France. Yeah, but no. The false tone is set up at the very first, long, laughable and totally unnecessary speech scene that does all the wrong service and only makes the tonality of the film pretentious and suddenly comic. Battle scenes - there are several. But a very sloppy montage and abrupt character add to a bigger misery. Even the man himself seems to be all at odds with the whole thing. The worst is yet to come with typically awful depiction of Russians. More to say here is only to induce laughter. So silly the whole scene is. The best is all of a sudden is a very delicate and deeper take on Germans - Jodl, Rommel, Steiger are all very decent and highly deliverable antagonists with their hopes and falls. That does not save these unimaginably long 3 hours of a plodding mess from a yawning boredom.