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Battle of the Bulge (1965)
Rate:
3
Viewed:
4/07, 1/25
4/07:
When former U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower comes out of retirement to have a meeting to denounce a military picture for
its gross historical inaccuracies, that's when you knew it's in deep trouble.
That's what happened to Battle of the Bulge. The filmmakers claimed it took place on a sunny day on
green grass in Spain when in fact it's supposed to be during the winter in the densely forested, snow-covered
Ardennes region of northern France and southern Belgium. Now, I present you the ingredients in order to create a
bad war picture:
1. Soldiers throwing their arms in the air before dropping to the ground without being physically shot.
2. Lack of blood.
3. A smattering of troops.
4. Lots of focus on big-name actors who end up making cameos.
5. Bad acting.
6. Corny characters.
7. Germans speaking English.
8. Tons of explosions.
9. Anachronistic vehicles rolling everywhere.
10. A running time of three hours.
11. Closing screen credits to show gratitude for the dedication and lives lost of men who fought in the
battle and/or war.
12. An avalanche of historical inaccuracies.
13. Telly Savalas.
Battle of the Bulge manages to have them all. I expect a war picture to be three hours long, but when it's
badly done, one hour is enough: a thirty-minute buildup, twenty-five minutes of fighting, and five minutes
to wrap things up.
There's a particular scene when an American soldier was running alongside a tank before throwing his arms up
in the air in anguish and then falling down. At no point had he been physically shot or shown with blood. Another
is when the soldiers were massacred by Germans, not a single drop of blood was shown against the white snow.
Why is it that every time I see a war picture Telly Savalas must appear? He always plays the same obnoxious
character and manages to ruin the whole thing because all he does is to be gung-ho like a retarded moron.
Fortunately, Robert Shaw makes the film tolerable enough for me to sit through.
All in all, why make up stuff about a battle for the sake of convenience, especially when it cost the
lives of thousands?
1/25:
Boring, silly, overlong, and rarely backed by facts, Battle of the Bulge is still the worst
WWII movie ever made.
Why Telly Savalas? Who cares about that stupid jackass? Ditto for James MacArthur as Lieutenant Weaver who
cost a man his life for nothing. What's with the soldiers throwing their arms in the air
whenever they're shot without being physically harmed? Why are the Germans speaking English? The director can't
even keep up with all of the subplots to save his own life. He even said before taking on the job, "The dialogue
was not remarkable, the character relationships nothing special — it seemed to me just another war picture."
As for the battle itself, it was the last offensive attack launched by the Germans. Had they succeeded, it
wouldn't have mattered; all they could do was delay the inevitable. As a result, the Russians would've gotten
to Berlin sooner and taken over more of Germany. The Germans were simply running out of everything. You name it:
planes, tanks, gas, resources, soldiers, and so on. It's only because they decided to wage battle on two fronts
simultaneously.
Everything shown in Battle of the Bulge is patently false. The snow was pretty heavy at the time,
and they fought in the middle of a densely forested area. Oddly, the weather in the film cleared up many times,
having become sunny at the end, which meant the planes could come in but didn't. In reality, they had done so,
marking the biggest turning point of the battle.
The epliogue says, "This picture is dedicated to the one million men who fought in this great battle of World
War II." Really, one million? Try adding two more zeroes to that number.
All in all, everybody was lucky to have Robert Shaw on board to save Battle of the Bulge from earning a
rating of '1'.