30 minutes of gore followed by 120 of stupidity

Rating: 2/10 (25 August 2001)

The movie starts out with a recreation of the Normandy landings. Plenty of gore, some humor which may have been untintentional. The US army platoon shows they know how to stay alive, use cover, not take foolish chances, etc. The whole landing was better shown in "The Longest Day" without the gore but this first sequence was effective. Next the platoon is asked to find 1 particular solider. At this point the boys seem to leave all their brains behind. They decide to fight to the death over some meaningless bridge, commit one act of stupidity after another. This would make some sort of sense if they were green troops but they spent the whole first half hour showing how good they were at fighting. Everyone I know thought the whole last section of the movie, irritating, stupid, or worse. How it got such a high rating is beyond me. After you sit through it once you will never want to see it again.