SS steals from "Blair Witch"

Rating: 1/10 (12 November 2001)

The first several minutes (after an introductory scene) show a vivid description of D-Day on one of the beaches invaded by American forces. Anyone who has read Cornelius Ryan's _The Longest Day_ already has images like those in his head (read the book, it's one of the best histories ever written). It starts the problem. There's too much of a jerky-camera effect. It's acceptable in the battle scene, but hardly in the rest of the movie, rendering it unwatchable for people like me.
What I did see was a pretty fair fictional story based on a true story. Of course, a director like SS is hardly going to tell just a story, but has an agenda he's working behind the scenes, manipulating us into some snare or other where we have to accept his worldview on things. After all, we just *saw* it -- so it must be that way, right?
Unfortunately, I couldn't see enough of it because of the camera work to try to decipher his hidden agenda. I don't even know how the movie came out, and frankly I don't care. Cloying as SS is in all his movies, this film is curiously unengaging, and the characters show little advance (Nazi, American GI) from the "Indiana Jones" films, which are still his best achievements.