The producers of "Company of Heroes" tried to make a World War II film. They get credit for the effort. But the finished product makes one wonder how serious an effort they made. Or maybe, one should question the ability of modern filmmaking to proximate historical things with any semblance of reality.
The plot for this movie comes from a video game. That's OK – fiction is fiction. The one thing it has is a big serving of action. I watched the bonus video on making of the movie. Some of the production people and cast described the lengths they went to for authentic props. For instance, they got a Russian tank that closely resembled a German Tiger tank. They duplicated it in several shots to give the impression of a column of tanks. They made one wooden model German anti-aircraft gun and moved it from place to place to represent many such guns.
But the anti-aircraft gun looked shiny and freshly painted. It didn't look like a weapon that had been in combat for three or four years. Wherever we saw anti-aircraft guns, it was the same shiny, brand-new looking phony prop. And the tanks all looked the same. They didn't smudge the tank or change its appearance from scene to scene. So, it was obviously the same one. The aircraft used were all computer generated, and aerial CGI never looks real to me – or to other viewers I know.
As I said, the film did have lots of action. But that was so unreal from two standpoints. Most of the GIs were using Tommy guns. None appeared to have cylinder magazines, so they would have had 20-round or 30-round box magazines. We see several of the GIs firing the submachine guns repeatedly. They had to be peeling off scores of rounds. But never do we see anyone changing an empty magazine. Indeed, they never seem to run out of bullets. The only time we see men carrying rifles – which most of the enlisted men in an infantry unit would have, is in the early part of the film, with the snipers.
The movie had the "feel" of a video game throughout. Not only did the GIs have unlimited bullets in all their Tommy guns, but they mowed down the Germans by the dozens. In scenes with several Germans firing on them, we only occasionally see one of the Americans being hit, while they take out scores of Germans. Finally, even the filming outdoors in Bulgaria with the snow on the ground didn't look real. Maybe because digital video is so sanitized, it doesn't look real.
This movie took place around the time of the Battle of the Bulge – in late 1944. When they learn about the Germans working on an atomic bomb, the GIs don't question it at all. They remark as though they knew what an atomic bomb was – even though it hadn't been invented yet. Some scientists and a very few top government officials knew about the efforts to make an atomic bomb, and what it was. But very few people had such knowledge before the U.S. dropped the A-bombs on Japan in August, 1945.
There isn't much more than can be said about this film. It left me feeling as though I had just watched someone play a war video game.
