Battle Force

One of the worst war films I've seen. The low budget certainly doesn't justify the film being filled with errors. Many films use a low budget to enhance psychological depth or other aspects that can be explored even without money.

The errors are numerous, right from the beginning, making this a difficult film to watch until the end. Mistakes in setting, errors in uniforms, historical inaccuracies. The dialogues are truly poor and unprofessional, clearly lacking an expert on World War II military themes in the production. The actors are not very credible, if not entirely unbelievable. When I rate a film, I usually start from 10 and then deduct points based on aspects that I find poorly executed. It's difficult for me to give a score below 6 because I always recognize the value and effort behind the production of a film. In this case, I had to start from 6 because from the very first frames, the low cinematic quality of the production is evident. I've seen films made by amateur reenactors that were better done and even with even fewer resources than this.

I love World War II movies. I have enjoyed ones made during World War II through the present. I have enjoyed all countries of origin from the Nazi propaganda turkey "Stuka" on. I enjoy movies about all sides and all theatres of the war, if it's a well done movie. Alas, Battle Recon definitely is not.

It's normally a very bad sign when the director, the writer and the top billed star are all the same person. It was. With ludicrous acting and an utterly cliché script there was little to save the movie. The even had utterly cliché characters like the classic black on black trench coat evil SS officer.

The script wasn't just cliché, it was 21st century politically correct cliché. The day had to be saved by two Italian partisan women.

It's not difficult to get historical continuity in World War II movies. There are so many armchair experts to assist you. Obviously they didn't bother to go to gunboards.com and ask for a decent one. The German uniforms were clearly East German uniforms with Nazi insignias sewn on. They were almost all SS insignias, like they had hired cheaply a bunch of re-enactors.

They couldn't even get basic continuity items right. The Italian partisan's gun kept switching between a Mauser and a M1 Garand. It was as if they put down their guns between shots and couldn't even tell everyone to pick up the right one between shots.

Don't bother with this one, not with thousands of better World War II movies out there.

Sorry folks.....this movie has terrible acting and a terrible script. Simple awful.

I really enjoy WWII movies and have seen 100s of them. Realism is a must in any good action flick (Patton, Go Tell The Spartans, Das Boot, etc).

From haircuts to scripted words and phrases, this movie was strictly 1975ish.

The German commander could well have been the commandant on "Hogan's Heroes" and I kept expecting Sgt. Schultz to appear in the next scene.

The best part was when this thing finally ended.

Do yourself a favor and view an old episode of "F Troop" instead!

To be fair, as someone who absolutely hates most low budget WWII movies, this was surprisingly well done given the limited scope of budget and location. The acting was certainly decent and watchable. The script may have had its clichés, but what script doesn't? The important part is...it was genuine and tries to entertain rather than educate. It's NOT a documentary, which many critics here fail to understand. It's a decently crafted 'Drama' which was well shot, choreographed, and realized. The SS officer was a little over-the-top but again, this movie DOESN'T insult your intelligence by trying to be something it's not. It is NOT an amateur project by any means. It is NOT a 'Great' cinematic masterpiece either. It is simply, a reasonably well thought out period piece that offers some very decent entertainment despite a few shortcomings.

It's obvious these people worked very hard to make this project as good a movie as possible. There was no 'slouching' in how they went about shooting and producing this. If you want to look for all its faults rather than enjoy the sincere effort put into it, go ahead. Otherwise, have a glass and just let it roll. It hooked me, and THAT is a very hard thing to do.

To be fair, I watched only the first 20 minutes of this movie, so my comments are only based on that. I might have hung around if WWII Sicily's "landscape" wasn't so easily recognizable as that of Southern California. I gave up hope when several shots showed the film's characters walking along railroad tracks on top of modern concrete ties with modern signals in the background.

I get the feeling this movie was a film school project. And if it was, then I guess it's OK for that purpose. If not, at least it was a good opportunity for inexperienced actors to put something in their blank resumes.

The combat special effects were OK... enough has been said by others regarding the realism of the combat itself, but I thought the special effects used for weapons discharge and bullet flight was OK... more realistic than those we used to see 15-20 years ago. That earned this movie its 3rd star.