Assault on Hill 400

Saw this movie listed with a couple of actors I like thought it might be a fun movie to watch. This was an insult to my father and my uncles who fought in the second world war. Me and my dad used to watch all the old gung ho, American movies From World War II and some of those were really cheesy and we loved them but this is an insult for the intelligence to people firing rifles with the bolts not even moving machine guns bullet belts aren't even moving while firing a nurse with really bad German accent. I would never recommend this movie to anyone. It is a total waste of time. There are so many better movies out there to watch than this one, particularly on the subject of World War II.

Bad acting for the most part with a weak plot. Michael Madsen and Billy Baldwin's performance is severely lacking. These actors (and I use that term loosely for this movie) need to hang it up, if you see their names in a movie, it's going to be one to avoid. The best acting came from the nurse, who has a minor part and Eric Roberts is underutilized; mainly just clicking a camera every few seconds.

Some of the gear and uniforms were okay, while others are really poor quality; you can see better at a reenactment. It's apparent that there was no technical advisor and the Germans are for the most part laughable.

Best thing the producers did was use Eastern Costume for the wardrobe or this film would have a 2/10 rating. I would expect better from an Asylum movie by now. Just grabbing a couple veteran actors is not enough to overcome bland script and poor special effects. Set locations were also very bad along with camera work. Cinematography is almost non existent save for one scene opener showing the hills with some very dense low fog. As far as the "battle sequences", not in any way plausible. So much for the crack German troops that were mentioned by the general with his helmet on in the HQ. Only other + was shooting on Red Digital. Thumbs down!

How to do a better job on this production?

First, hire a military consultant. That would get by the majority of the issues.

Next, hiring an acting coach. Not a really expensive one. Maybe a director from the Little Theater of east New Jersey.

Taking these two steps would great enhance the production value of this movie.

Then the next step would be to follow just a little of the historical facts associated with this battle.

This film is almost a disservice to the memory of the heroes that fought in this battle.

Dialogue is awful, could could have used a little polishing.

If nothing else I learned to never watch a film directed by this guy.

The very first scene was a dead giveaway that I was in for a crapfest. We have a lieutenant general from one division and a brigadier general from a different division, who's supposed to be the real-life Dutch Cota, but looks like he's going to keel over and die at any moment. These generals, a corps commander and an assistant division commander, without any staff anywhere to be seen, are giving a mission briefing to two lieutenants - platoon commanders. Admittedly, if these generals have nothing better to do while running a war, it's probably more efficient to cut out four levels of the chain of command and brief the lieutenants directly. These two platoon commanders are told that if they don't take Hill 400, the Allies will lose the war. General Cota mentions that he watched from Omaha Beach as the lieutenants, or one of them, scaled the cliff at Pointe-du-Hoc. This is pretty amazing, because I've been to both Omaha Beach and Pointe-du-Hoc twice, and not only are they blocked from view from each other by terrain, they are too far apart to see human beings even if they weren't blocked.

The lieutenants take their platoon out, which clearly hasn't been trained in small unit tactics, along with an embedded (a term that wasn't used in the 1940s) octogenarian photographer who is constantly taking photos of nothing, yet never uses up the film in his camera, because he never puts in a new roll.

Honestly, after the lame briefing by the generals I stopped paying much attention to the movie. I worked on my Duolingo lessons and occasionally looked up to see what implausibility was happening. I'm not even sure if I watched it until the end.

It just gets exhausting listing all the problems with these terrible independent films, one right after another. I don't know how these filmmakers make money performing these abortions.