rating:
(out of
4 stars)United States, United Kingdom; 1979; Made for television
Directed by Delbert Mann; produced by Norman Rosemont; written by Paul Monash
Starring Richard Thomas, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasence, Ian Holm, Patricia Neal, Paul Mark Elliott
Below you will find a temporary review for this film. The real (better, more complete) review will be online very soon.
As an anti-war movie 'All Quiet on the Western Front' delivers. The message
is obvious and that is a good thing. It is too bad that other parts are not
that good. The movie is based on the book 'Im Westen Nichts Neues' from
Erich Maria Remarque. The book is better than the movie. The other movie
based on the same book is from 1930 and was directed by Lewis Milestone.
That movie is also much better than this one.
I didn't hate this movie. There are some good elements like the message I
mentioned above, and therefore the story has good parts as well. The sound,
the sets and the visual effects are also pretty good. I didn't like the
dialogue. Almost every sentence was a big cliché and sounded like it was
straight from a soap opera. The acting wasn't that good either. Ernest
Borgnine and Ian Holm have done the best they can, but Richard Thomas as
Paul, the main character and narrator, and a lot of small parts were not
good at all. May be it also was the sometimes ridiculous dialogue and the
way they handled it.
The movie did keep my attention. Although the action scenes are nothing
compared to 'Saving Private Ryan' action scenes it looks pretty good to me.
The more personal scenes looked a little stupid. There is a scene where Paul
loses one of his friends in the battlefield. Personally I think a child
could predict this death and with a stupid action like that Paul's friend
almost deserved it. I don't think it should look like that.