Great example of an independent film

Rating: 7/10 (26 May 2007)

For being a (relatively) low-budget, independent film, I was pleasantly surprised at the excellent production values of this movie. However, I couldn't help but think that the dialog was quite amateurish. It kept pulling me out of the movie.
Not bad writing, mind you. But the script was the weakest part of the movie by far. The arguments made by the characters were not compelling, and often seemed incomplete. Very little of it seemed natural. I kept thinking it was like something that me or my friends would have written. That is, it was only okay. The dialog written for the British pilot was especially bad. Hard to explain, but I think it would have been better had it gone through a few more re-writes.
That said, I did enjoy Saints and Soldiers. It was very short, probably the shortest war movie I've ever seen (only 90 minutes). In that respect, it fills a niche when you're in the mood for a WWII movie but don't want to sit through a 3-hour epic, and you've watched through all the episodes of Band of Brothers a dozen times. :-) It had an interesting premise, but it just didn't follow through as well as it could have.
I had to edit this to add a note about the British accent. I completely agree with other reviewers of this movie; the accent is beyond awful, and it didn't help that the lines they gave him were as hackneyed as they possibly could have been. Frankly, I don't see why they couldn't have made it an American pilot anyway. If I had been the director I would have made that switch the very second I heard that guy say a line. :-)