A few weeks ago, I reviewed an Alan Ritchson action/SF movie called War Machine. I’ve been watching a fair amount of Ritchson stuff lately because of Reacher, Season 4. So I decided to see if there are any other recent genre movies with Ritchson, who seems to have a bit more range than Reacher shows. This movie, from 2020, is written and directed by Eric Brett, and purports to be a World War II ghost story, where Ritchson plays one of a patrol of five American GIs in Occupied France in 1944. But hold onto your hats—it gets weird! Don’t expect Ritchson to have a major role here; although he gets good screen time, he’s not one of the major players. (There will be some spoilers in this review, as it’s a 6-year-old movie. Just sayin’.)
The film begins with two paragraphs in German on a black screen. In case you don’t speak or read German, here’s the translation:
This war will never end. Every mile takes a toll on my body and my mind. Every move robs me of my sanity. Every step takes me farther from home, until I’m just the shadow of the man my mother kissed goodbye ages ago.
And I’m endlessly tense. Because I don’t know what will come first: the bullet that takes my life, or my last chance at redemption.
Because my German is very spotty, I didn’t translate this properly until after the movie had ended. I made an assumption about the paragraphs which was incorrect; I assumed it was part of the diary that one of the men found in the chateau. You’ll find out about that in a bit.
After the quote, the movie begins with five American soldiers, WWII GIs, asleep in a semicircle in a woods or forest. Chris (Brenton Thwaites), the lieutenant, wakes up after hearing a noise—he sees a shadowy figure apparently pointing a pistol at him. He gasps out, “What do you want?” and then squeezes his eyes shut, apparently thinking it’s a dream. The next scene shows all the soldiers awake, prepping to move on. Chris is studying a map, with a compass next to it, making notes. There is byplay among the others; Kirk (Theo Rossi) is scratching his foot with a fork, asking Butchie (Alan Ritchson) if he has an extra pair of socks; he makes a remark about a cousin and is told off by Eugene (Skylar Astin). Chris tells them they are about 30 miles from their destination. There’s an old chateau that was taken from the Germans, and High Command wants them to relieve the group there until they themselves are relieved. They move out.
This trek starts with something that raised my curiosity right away—they’re in occupied territory, yet they are patrolling casually, not looking around. Odd behaviour. They hear a jeep coming, so they get off the track and wait—it’s a German open staff car; as it drives nonchalantly down the track they’ve just abandoned, it hits a mine—whether they GIs planted it is unsure. They rush up to the car and shoot one of the Germans who is moaning. Chris tells Butchie to look for code books, papers, anything that might “help us against these guys.”. Tappert (Kyle Gallner) takes his knife and starts prying gold teeth out of the dead soldiers’ jaws. (That’s not exactly sanctioned by the modern rules of war or the Uniform Code of Military Justice; neither is the shooting of wounded enemies. Another red flag here.) One of the Germans, a big Major (Billy Zane), seems only stunned, and Butchie wants to box him. Chris vetoes the boxing match by shooting the Major with his pistol, telling the group that they’re way behind and have to go. After the German officers, the GIs are heading towards a ridge that has a copse beyond it, and see a group of French people, including a woman wearing what looks like a concentration camp outfit (stripes) climbing the ridge toward them. Tappert goes forward and gives the woman (who has a child with her) the Major’s greatcoat and all the gold teeth.
They march through a semi-destroyed village, and here comes weird thing number three: although we can see movement in some second-story windows, the lads never look up. They finally reach the chateau and the other crew can’t wait to get out and leave quickly. The other lieutenant says the radio must be broken, and Butchie tells them to leave it; Eugene is “a regular Marconi with a screwdriver.” Eugene doesn’t have much more luck than the previous crew. Various weird things happen during the night, which I won’t detail—you do want some surprises, right? Oh, and Eugene finds a German diary in the basement, so they learn a few things about the previous owners of the chateau; their name was Helwig and they hid Jews from the Nazis.
Now I will skip ahead to when a troop of Germans, accompanied by two trucks, comes to the chateau; the GIs lock the door—“maybe they’ll think nobody’s home and go away” (fat chance) and hide behind furniture. But German soldiers don’t take “no” for an answer, and our guys end up in a firefight. The Germans manage to break in, but they are killed by the GIs… aided in some part by supernatural happenings. The GIs decide that, despite the threat of court-martial for leaving their posts, they must evacuate the mansion. As they go up a hill after evacuating, they pass a blown-up ambulance on their left.
As they walk, they discuss the various supernatural happenings they saw and experienced, even trying to decide whether they are dreaming or dead and in Heaven. “If this is Heaven, then Heaven sucks, man.” “Well, maybe it’s the other place.” They come to a ridge below with is a copse, and see the same French fugitives they’d encountered before, only this time the woman is wearing the Major’s coat. After that, they again pass that same ambulance on the left side.
Shortly after they see the ambulance for the third time is where most of the people who hated the ending of this movie think it went off the rails. I won’t tell you what it is, but if you keep an open mind, it’s not a bad “beginning of the end”—but the actual end is weak and trite, in my opinion. I’ll be interested in hearing what you think, if you see it and let me know. But I can’t say more, because the ending is nothing like what you think it is.
NOTE: This column is in no way written, edited, proofed or composed by AI, though some of my photo editing software uses it in some capacity. This is a human column and will remain so.
Hey, write me your opinion of my review, if you will. I’m on Facebook, or you could email me (stevefah at hotmail dot com). Let me know whether you liked it or you hated it. My opinion is, as always, my own, and doesn’t necessarily reflect the views of Amazing Stories or its owner, editor, publisher or other columnists. See you next time!
Steve has been an active fan since the 1970s, when he founded the Palouse Empire Science Fiction Association (PESFA) and the more-or-less late MosCon in Pullman, WA and Moscow, ID, though he started reading SF/F in the early-to-mid 1950s, when he was just a sprat. He moved to Canada in 1985 and quickly became involved with chairing or helping run Canadian cons, including ConText (’89 and ’81) and VCON. As a fan, he’s published a Hugo-nominated (one nomination) fanzine, New Venture, and he’s founded two writing groups (Writers’ Bloc and Writers of the Lost, Ink). He’s emceed and auctioned art at many West Coast and Northwest conventions including one Westercon. As a writer, he’s published a couple of books and a number of short stories (including one in Compostella [Tesseracts 20], and has collaborated with his two-time Aurora-winning wife Lynne Taylor Fahnestalk on a number of art projects. As of this writing he’s the proofreader for R. Graeme Cameron’s Polar Borealis and Rhea Rose’s Polar Starlight publications. He’s been writing for Amazing Stories off and on since the early 1980s. His column can be found on Amazing Stories most Fridays.
