The Silent Army

Sorry, but in opposition to many of my predecessors I think this is quite a strong movie. The book might be a bit simple. (An heroic European cook saving a child out of an African rebel army. This is indeed not very believable. And the little side-love-story was not left out as well) But the picture has very strong emotional moments, is well edited and shot with opulent scenery and the acting is not as bad as many others put it. Just look at the rebels leader saying the cruelest things with the softest paternal voice you can think of. "You can call me daddy" - What a thrilling ambivalence lies in this scene. And the weirdest thing about all of it is that while watching the movie you know that those things are really happening like that down in Africa. (of course except the heroic part of the dutch cook - but the cruel part of it is unfortunately true) I have to say that I knew nothing of a Mister Borsato (Main Actor) before I watched this movie. Being from Germany I didn't even know him as a singer as all Dutch seem to do. And maybe that made my sight on his acting a bit more objective. At least I can say that I have seen many famous singers or pop-stars trying themselves out in being an actor with much less success then Marco Borsato did. only my 2 cents...

Despite the reviews (all of them were bad) I wanted to see this, just to see 'how bad, bad writing can be'. It delivered and went to the limit.

How can a producer or even a director with some credit to his name ever cast Marco Borsato in this B-movie? He may be a nice singer, but that doesn't make him an actor as this movie painfully demonstrates. His personal involvement in the charity WarChild is noble, but this very long advertisement for this organization is a disgrace.

The acting was non-existent, the story unbelievable, the action scenes right out of any Ed Wood Jr-movie. (That might read as a compliment but it isn't.) I truly had a really hard time staying seated, specially with so many people around me leaving the theater.

First of all; the behavior of Marco Borsato is very rookies and secondly you can save time when you watch a Warchild ad, because this movie is just one huge Warchild advert.

All the effort of showing the Warchild (a NGO) case is really annoying and this is a bad ego trip of Marco Borsato Borsato is the only hero of the movie and the Africans all seem to be war victims or war criminals and nothing else. If a naive cook from Europe becomes a action "hero" in the way that it has being filmed it looks like a nice piece of imperialism.

The subject of child soldiers has already been told and filmed hundreds of times and this movie is not a good way to show the problem, because its just a personal ego trip of those who made it.

excerpt, more at my location - According to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, up to half of the world's child soldiers are based in Africa. In the end titles of the film Blood Diamond (2006) it is claimed that "there are still 200,000 child soldiers in Africa," so it's little surprise director Jean Van De Velde (All Stars, Wild Romance) felt the need to remind us of their plight with his latest film, The Silent Army.

The Silent Army offers rich, authentic-looking settings and some striking visuals; however, gaping plot-holes and cartoonish characters soon frustrate, so viewers expecting anything other than volatile scenes of children being harmed will be sorely disappointed.

A Dutch guy runs a restaurant in Uganda. He lives there together with his young son and their life isn't quite all that - he suffers from the trauma of having lost his wife and the political stability in the country isn't quite right either. When things go from bad to worse he's forced to do something about it.

I guess the story could be worse. It is pretty standard, but nothing too bad. What makes this film bad is the fact that one of the main players is in his daily life a singer/entertainer (and a successful one at that), but he's not an actor. Most of the scenes he's staring into the camera much like a rabbit stares into the headlights of a car just before being run over. The other actors in the film do a better job, but the irritation of having one bad main character is so bad that their good work is overshadowed by his bad work.

As a political message this film brings too much action, too much heroism. It might have left a deeper impact (on me at least) if it had not tried to be an action film. Then the real painful truth behind it all might have dawned some better, but not now. Now it's once seen, twice forgotten.

4 out of 10 toe curling bad acted scenes