Wolves of War

Wolves of War feels like a generic wartime film without much identity. The acting is basic at best, the characters aren't developed, and the story doesn't bring anything new to the table. Instead of being gripping or emotional, it just plays out predictably.

There's nothing outright terrible about it, but there's nothing memorable either. A very forgettable experience.

IN A NUTSHELL: At the end of World War II, a tough British officer leads a band of Allied commandos into enemy territory in Bavaria on one last impossible mission to extract an important American scientist held hostage by the Nazis.

The suspenseful war drama was directed by Giles Alderson. The story was written by Toby Kearton and Samuel Christopher Ellis. The screenplay was written by Ben Mole and is based on a true story.

THINGS I LIKED: I really enjoy World War II movies because there was such a clear line between the Allies and the Nazi enemies. In this film, the lines blur a little bit, offering unique insight.

Ed Westwick plays the leading man. I like him, although it was often hard to understand his subtle, facial expressions at times.

Matt Willis plays a large role in the movie. He kind of reminded me of a young Russell Crowe both in looks and voice quality. Did you know he's the co-founder and bassist in the band "Busted"?

Max Themak plays the sadistic Nazi leader. He is so over-the-top in his viciousness that it's easy to hate him.

There are some suspenseful moments.

The team looked like they were trying hard to create an interesting movie.

THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE: There are some cliched moments stolen from other/better movies.

I wished I had captions to read during this movie because sometimes, it was hard to understand what people were saying.

The child actors were not very good. I feel so mean writing that.

As a Grammar Nazi, I wished they had added punctuation to the end card toward the end of the movie. I always appreciate reading "the rest of the story" at the end of movies like this.

The field gear and locations in the movie aren't accurate. True history buffs will be annoyed by that. The film would have definitely benefited from having a military consultant on set.

Ultimately, the movie isn't memorable.

TIPS FOR PARENTS: Brutal violence Bloody deaths Profanity, including 1 F-bomb

THEMES: War Hope Family Science The value of human life

Cable TV has a lot answer for. And that 'lot' is the number of very poor quality movies (those rating less than 5 stars on IMDB) being pumped out and not worth the effort of hitting the play button. I can only presume this is to give the growing horde of cable channels some "content".

They are awful, cheap things that are worse than time-passers, films that can be used to do just that. No, they are time wasters. That time being the 20 minutes one spends giving it a chance, before switching it off in contempt.

Poor benighted "Wolves of War" here is just yet another one. I have taken aim at it here because I just spent 2 hours trying to find a historically based movie to watch. I tried 4, 2 set in Roman times and 2 in WW2. They were all garbage.

And it is not just today, but for months I have flicked through the cable dross and found hardly anything to watch. To review this movies, which is my job here, I will say that it is: merely adequately acted, (no one was anything other than a cliche)', poorly budgeted (it looks cheap) and full of technical errors, (a character gives his main weapon to someone else while he goes out alone to operate the radio. In enemy territory!). But these just few problems are not "WoW"s sins. There is a plethora of the said "bill fillers" that work exactly the same way. Even the opening credits of the different movies use the same regimen, Black and white historic stills fading in and out of ones of the cast "acting".

But being one who is here to help let me suggest: Movie makers, pool your resources and make a few quality movies rather than copious poor ones. That way you should be able to afford a good director and historical/technical advisors who actually are knowledgeable, instead of just thinking they are, thereby cheapening the whole production down to garbage level.

Near enough is never good enough, when the customer is paying for it.

I love WWIi films but not this one. So bad in so many ways. Like a 1" thick wooden table could really serve as a shield against a machine gun. Like military men in that era turning their machine guns horizontally while firing or the two handed hold on a pistol grip? I don't think so. Or bombs being dropped and grenades exploding with nearly zero damage to soldiers going unscathed. So hard to watch this very misguided update to such small things that for me, made this film nearly unwatchable. Even though the the story was supposedly based on a true story, I didn't really care if the good guys finished their mission successfully or not. Total waste of time.

The bad: this is just a cheap copy of a war story, that has already been told and filmed so many times before. Lots of war movies have similar storylines, but what is terrible about this movie is that everything is amateurishly done...

The actors are B-listed actors, who usually would only star in tv series, wherein acting quality isnt paramount. The photography is not terrible, but certainly not very good either.

But what is most annoying though is the fact that this story is NOT thrilling whatsoever. The few action scenes are almost laughably amateurish.

Wow. I really had to struggle not to start laughing. But in the end I really was struggling not to fall asleep.