Excellent Movie - Not overly religious

Rating: 10/10 (29 December 2005)

Got this for Christmas and have already watched it 3 times. I really enjoyed the story, and thought the scenes and dialog were wonderfully crafted. After seeing it three times, I started to notice little things that were mentioned in the director's commentary...like the problems they had with the snow, etc. But overall, the quality was much better that I would have expected from an independent film.
Some critics have said that this film was too preachy, or too Mormon. I disagree. I don't think I heard the word Mormon at all in the movie...in fact, the only clues that Deacon was a Mormon was that he was a missionary (if you knew that the Mormon church had missionaries in Germany before WWII), that he did not drink coffee or smoke, and that he came from Snowflake Arizona (a place where there are a lot of Mormons). I would not be surprised if some people just thought that Deacon was just a good Christian. His explanations of his beliefs to the other soldiers could be shared by just about any person who believes in God.
Actually, the only thing I found unbelievable was the LACK of swearing in this movie...not that I didn't mind it, but I would say that soldiers in real life often have a much more colorful vocabulary. However, the lack of swearing, in my opinion, help to focus on the real message of the movie, which is that in war, there are always two sides, and they are BOTH human sides.