Assault on Hill 400

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!

The fact that "well trained and resupplied German soldiers" (not the weak Polish kind, as the General described them), can be seen shooting a Thompson at 5:38 (behind the German holding an MP40), and another one shooting a Grease gun at around 5:59 (hiding behind the tree) made me giggle. If they are what the General describes, then there's no need for them to use US weapons. Not to mention the poor tactics, use of ranks, lingo, and what not.

Also, this movie only portrays what seems to be a incomplete squad from 2nd Rangers. Some of the roles in the squad seem to be replaced by ordinary riflemen. It should be mentioned that there were at least 457 enlisted men and 27 officers from 2nd Rangers who went up that hill. And a whole bunch of infantry before them, sustaining a minimum of 16,000 casualties.

It's inaccurate, the acting is stale. I can't say much good about this movie. This movie clearly missed out on military advisors, and perhaps some acting classes.

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.

I am an avid war film watcher. The acting in this film is one of the worst I have seen. Helmets that don't fit and over their eyes, shooting from the most ridiculous positions you can imagine, and a pillbox that apparently can fire bullets that come back and it the wall below from slot they are firing from /facepalm

Then there is 5 soldiers that take out a farmhouse without being noticed by the obs point in an upstairs window, despite crossing a 300m open field!

As someone else mentioned German soldiers standing in open spaces in the line of fire waiting to get shot my goodness...

don't waste your time folks.

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.