Uneven War Movie

Theo Robertson

It's always a bad sign when a film's theme tune sounds nothing like the genre it's claiming to be . THE BAT for example features a funky jazz tune and boy was that film a pile of rodent droppings and alarm bells started ringing when the opening credits of ANZIO started where a war weary corespondent played a very possibly drunk Robert Mitchum marched through a military HQ to the sounds of a Frank Sinatra style swing song ! Yeah there's nothing quite like a war film to get you on your feet grooving away , bah bah bah bah bah bah bah

ANZIO isn't an awful film but it's far from being a great one either with the script being the major problem . It opens one of those light hearted scenes of with over paid , over sexed and over confident US soldiers that we've seen far too many times before . I guess it's supposed to be amusing but it's not . Eventually the film lives up to its title and shows us what went wrong at the Anzio landings with the American generals Clark and Lucas not driving inland quick enough . This is a fairly good history lesson since it paints a fairly poor picture of American leadership in Italy . Remember in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN , BAND OF BROTHERS and A BRIDGE TOO FAR Monty is painted as possibly the most incompetent allied General of the war ? This was nothing compared to the ridiculous mistakes made by Clark and Lucas during the Italian campaign , though somewhat cowardly this film renames Clark as " Carson " and Lucas as " Lewis " which is a great pity because a history student could do worse than watch this film , though if they did they'd notice like a great number of war films made during this period ( BATTLE OF THE BULGE is a good example ) that both German and American tanks are from a different generation but the Anzio landings here are more accurate than the ones seen in PINK FLOYD THE WALL

After this the narrative then sadly settles down into a straightforward war film where the action could basically have taken place anywhere like France or the Phillipines where a bunch of GIs are surrounded by the enemy and have to make it back to enemy lines . As many people have pointed out on these pages the script is rather unfocused and slightly disjointed and I had a gut feeling that some of it ended up on the cutting room floor , for example we see the platoon escape from a house at night and almost immediately after the platoon are trapped by some German snipers in the middle of the day , though to be honest this isn't a movie that is afraid to kill off characters so deserves some credit alongside the historical accuracy

score 5/10

Theo Robertson 9 October 2005

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1190219/