Age of Heroes

This is indeed a very boring and predictable copycatting movie, a "The Dirty Dozen", "The Guns of Navarone", "The Heroes of Telemark (yeah, more like this one copycatted)", and "Where Eagles Dare (copycatted some from this one too) British wannabe but a disastrous one with very weak script and bad casting job. Guys became commandos in this movie were just a bunch of hot-head yoyos who were so easily to cry, yell, shout... and their physical conditions (one of the guy was so skinny) to carry out a dubious mission were also very bad and weak, absolutely unqualified for a tough and dangerous mission. Went to the severe Scandinavian weather and terrain with poor preparation, inappropriate winter gears, logistics, fighting skills.

There was nothing special of their mission, because it's so vague, not Nazi's underground heavy water or atomic bomb development factories. The storyline was just a very thin straight line, so predictable and so boring. The movie just used Sean Bean to fool us to watch it, but the weak screenplay simply didn't give him anything to look great or even good. This is a very bad imitation of those great war movies but failed from the very beginning, never took off in the air 50 feet high and immediately crashed. Watching it was like chewing the same gum over and over for two hours.

Well I love Sean Bean and follow him since Stormy Monday through Sharpes epic. I am also happy to see Miko (she's not much appreciated where I live. But regardless of those two this movie is so mediocre.

Acting is OK - if you won't laugh seeing Sean is waving dagger instead of sword. Shots are alright but don't expect to see 40s London or anything (low budget). Effects are... Yes there are some effects in this movie, not too many though, and mostly 2d.

What is totally awkward is the plot. Some strange training and preparations. Then endless shooting, evil Nazis doing snuff movies, shooting, explosions, more shooting, exploding Nazis. And then finale: quick as if they run out of tape (long walk to Sweden takes 5 secs). Some characters die obviously but we don't really know or see how.

To sum up: don't expect great entertainment. This movie is low budget or some kind of financial con. If you like shooting and explosions (or exploding Nazis) then rent it.

This is a rather small scale intimate WWII drama about a Commando unit going to Norway to steal some radar technology from a German base there. There are gunfights but not huge battle scenes. Those expecting some super clever espionage because of Ian Fleming will be disappointed. It is a cover mission but it's not a spy yarn.

A little too much time was spent on the commandos training which was tedious. More at the end about how the mission helped the war would have been better.

They show Nazi atrocities towards the Norwegians. Not everyone remembers that Norway suffered during WWII.

Not too many famous actors here except Sean Bean. Overall while not a must see it's an okay watch far war buffs.

I don't understand all those negative comments. It's a simple ww2 movie about a commando team in the making. The actors are acting good, but it never intended to be a deep Shakespeare like prizewinning movie. As war movies go, it's quite entertaining. I wasn't bored. It isn't the best movie i've seen, but it's really worthwhile.

It immediately made me think about all the dirty dozen movies, but those are more "the A-team like", this movie is more serious. I've seen almost all ww2 movies (i collect them) and this isn't one to miss.

Do not take this it to seriously, and you'll love it, if you do, you might get bored, it isn't a typical Hollywood blockbuster....

In the fall of 2010, I spent a short time on the set of an independent film called "The Boarder," which was being shot in rural Nebraska. And one thing that I did learn while mingling amongst the technicians and actors was that even in something as aesthetically-driven as a motion picture, and with something passionate as a subject matter, it is still entirely possible for things to sour up and become impersonal. Movie-making is not easy, and the stress, I'm afraid, can wear out the artistic drive in some of us, especially if it's an early endeavor. That very well may have been the case, I'm afraid to say, with Adrian Vitoria's "Age of Heroes."

Again, it's hard to imagine a film based on a true story to be passionless and impersonal, but that is the case here. "Age of Heroes" is loosely based on a World War II British commando unit's mission to garner Germany intelligence. The particular mission was drawn up by Ian Fleming, who would later go on to write the James Bond novel series. So a story about men who risked and gave their lives, even in a shoestring budget film like this, is hard to imagine as soulless. But it is.

The way this movie is filmed, acted, scored, and executed, it's as if the filmmakers simply pulled the story out of a box full of potential stories and decided to roll along with it. Because it was their job, not because they particularly wanted to. Filming the battle scenes in this movie must have been very difficult, and unfortunately, the stress the directors and technicians had on them is apparent. It can be felt, and as a result, the scenes, meant to be white-hot, have a sort of staged, phony feeling to them.

There are worthy actors in the movie, headed by Sean Bean, but not one of them as a real part to act. What little personality they have is drawn straight out of previous war pictures. The key example is a tough commando sergeant, played with zest by William Houston; really just a pale imitation of the much-more-impressive gunnery sergeant from Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket" back in 1987.

If the film can be redeemed, it is in that it does not appear to aim particularly high. It doesn't have a big goal, so it doesn't accomplish much, and the failure isn't quite as compounding as it otherwise might have been. And a brisk 94 minutes, "Age of Heroes" was already over by the time I was really starting to grow bored.