The Frozen Front

Poorly acting bad dialogue incredibly bad battle scenes simply an abysmal movie

The only review above 6 are obvious fakes (the guys created an account just to boost the ratings artificially). Everything is phoney about this movie.

I'm French, so the dubbing was not an issue. This French is atrociously bad, a mix of 2020 yoofspeak and stilted literary French. Besides, the actors are terrible. These amateurs spouting these uninspired, verbose and phoney lines are a painful sight to behold.

Obviously the director has no idea about small arms tactics. The action scenes are an insult to actual people who fought in this war. Everything is wrong in so many ways.

3 guys running 100 yards straight in front of an MG42, shooting the hapless and apparently blind bad guys, then running back another 100 yards ? I don't think so.

A whole platoon digging in in useless shallow foxholes, with nothing but rifles and SMGs? No mortars, no MGs, not even a sniper rifle? I don't think so.

Germans positioning their 8 cm mortars close enough to get picked off by regular M1 rifles? Sent into a rout by a gung-ho Frenchy standing in the middle of the woods, throwing a single grenade and popping a few rounds in their general direction? I don't think so.

Frankly I wonder where the guy found enough money to produce this pile of garbage.

Seven months after D-Day, French and American soldiers team-up in the woods outside Jebsheim to liberate northeast France from the German invasion (Jebsheim is located 5-6 miles west of the German border).

"The Frozen Front" (2017), originally titled "Winter War," is a French Indie that pays tribute to the Franco-American allies who secured the forests bordering Jebsheim in preparation for The Battle of Jebsheim that was fought from January 24 to February 2, 1945. The low-budget filmmaking is akin to "Straight into Darkness" (2004), but more straightforward and less surrealistic, although this one isn't as good. It's akin to a more dramatic "When Trumpets Fade" (1998) dubbed in English (from the original French), but made on a much lower budget and less compelling story-wise.

Armchair critics lambaste the movie mainly because of the English dubbing that doesn't match the lips with some lines not dubbed at all wherein you'll see lips move, but no sound. If you can ignore this issue, "The Frozen Front" is effective in showing what it was like for the tough soldiers who took the forests outside the village in January, 1945. The acting is surprisingly convincing despite what critics claim and the English speaking fits the characters despite the dubbing not matching the lips.

The challenges and horrors of war in a winter wilderness setting are chronicled: The cold, the sparse sustenance, living in foxholes, sudden violence, horrific wounds, buddies dying, ramshackle medical care, despair, perseverance, chaplains, brother vs. brother and hope for victory.

The writer/director confidently takes his time in telling his commemorative tale, which I can't help respect. This is a movie solely about men fighting in the wintery woods during WW2, which might be too one-dimensional for many viewers, not to mention overlong by about an hour. Then there's the problematic dubbing.

The film runs 2 hours, 22 minutes, and was presumably shot in France (it was definitely shot in mainland Europe, but I can't find specific data).

GRADE: C

This is a WW2 film about disgruntled, weary soldiers from different nations in a frozen forest.

There is a lot of "smartness" to this. Some people won't like the disjointed dialog with pauses between lines, but that is how people spoke long ago. The constant "I interrupt the speaker cause I'm superior and he's inferior" dialog has been evolving in Western culture for the past 40 years.

But there was a time when being a brat wasn't praised the way that being a brat is praised today. And you thought the Nazis lost the war?

The only real drawback is how predictable the fate is for almost every character. It follows the Hollywood formula guideline of contriving bullets to only hit characters who are relatable, but never can find characters who are just hateful for no reason.

That, of course, has almost always been the Hollywood formula, although it wasn't preached as much until the mid sixties on into the eighties.

Very contrived, very predictable, but the dramatics are very good, and the characters do feel right for the times due to the constant pauses and lack of dialog among a tired group of soldiers.

They say that war is hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. Well, they got the boredom right. Also, it is hard to relate to the characters, who spend more time whining and bickering than fighting the Germans.