SAINTS & SOLDIERS

REVIEWED BY SHANNON H.

Our rating: 4 out of 5

Because of: profanity and violence

Rated:

Several films have been made about the Second World War for the past 60 years.  Older films like The Sands of Iwo Jima, Bataan, The Bridge on the River Kwai, and newer movies such as Pearl Harbor, The Longest Day, Saving Private Ryan, and others have graced the silver screens bringing forth different viewpoints, attitudes, and approaches to understanding one of the world's greatest conflicts of the 20th century.  The film, Saints and Soldiers, is no different in the sense that it's a World War Two film but it is unique in its' own way.

During the Battle of the Bulge (a battle brought on by Germany as a last ditch effort to stay in the war), a group of German soldiers captured unarmed U.S. soldiers and shot them all, execution style in Malmedy, Belgium (a famous massacre that is still controversial today). Only four managed to escape alive into the woods, managing to steal one rifle from a dead German. Corporal Nathan "Deacon" Greer, Private Shirl Kendrick, and Gordon Gunderson are separated from their company during the shooting and meet up with a medic, Steven Gould, a disillusioned soldier with an intense hatred for Germans. With no food or water, they have to find a way to survive and get back to the Allied forces because they are behind enemy lines. As soon as they start finding out information as to who's who and where everyone's from, they find a British flight sergeant, Oberon Winley, from the Royal Air Force, still in his parachute and stuck in a tree. Winley immediately says that he has vital intelligence information on the German army and he must get it to an outpost quickly or else. 

Realizing that Winley had vital information that could help save countless Allied military lives, the five men make a 20-mile trek in the snow to beat out several armored German tank divisions. Their journey is not an easy one. Finding food and water was tough but they were able to get along well with each other. Still, they had another problem: Cpl. Greer a.k.a "Deacon" (he was given that nickname because he was a "church boy" and a former missionary) was suffering from severe shell shock from accidentally shooting a woman and children in a raid. Since then, he had been psychologically unstable and the other soldiers had to make sure that he didn't go out with a gun by himself. Medic Gould was also skeptical of Deacon's loyalty to the U.S. Army since he had previously been to Germany as a missionary and was fluent in German. What made matters worse was when Deacon had recognized and conversed with a German P.O.W., Rudolph, they had captured. Despite their difficulties, they manage to get near an Allied outpost but are forced to break through German lines in order to get near the said outpost. Disguised as German soldiers, Medic Gould and Deacon set aside their differences and continue on their mission, leaving behind two critically injured comrades and taking a wounded Winley with them, hoping tp make it to the Allied lines alive.

Saints and Soldiers is rated PG-13 for violence and gore. The film is not incredibly violent but it's not something for kids to watch either. There are a few gruesome battle scenes where men are constantly being shot at; men being blown up with grenades and mowed down with machine gunfire. The wounded are seen bleeding from being shot by enemy gunfire. Profanity is limited to two uses of bast***, one use of d***, and five uses of "hell." A German soldier attempts to rape a Belgian woman running home to her young daughter (Deacon shoots him before he can finish assaulting her). This war movie has a lot of Christian content in it, partially because Deacon is a former missionary who carries a pocket Bible with him in his army fatigues. His comrades think he's weird because he never smokes, never drinks, and never drinks coffee (an implication that Deacon might be a Mormon; the LDS never do any of those things). One of the soldiers states that Deacon was from some "backwards town" in Arizona, indicating that the people there are just like him. Medic Gould, on the other hand, is a skeptic and had no belief in the concept of "life after death" because of his experiences on the battlefield. He tries to irritate Deacon about the fact that he had accidentally shot a woman and her children, trying to make him out to be a hypocrite since Deacon says he's a Christian. 

Deacon admits that he doesn't have all the answers to life's big questions and offers to give his pocket Bible to Gould so that he, himself, can find the Truth. While Gould questions Deacon's loyalty, Deacon states that both Americans and Germans are the same except for the uniforms and that Germans were brainwashed by Hitler. It's hard to reveal more of the Christian content without giving away the ending to the movie but to be safe I'll try to discuss it without revealing too much. The reason why people serve in the armed forces is to preserve freedom, not just for the USA but for those who are oppressed and can't fight for themselves. These soldiers put their lives on the line so others can live in freedom, an example of sacrifice. Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice so that we can have freedom from sin. 

I really enjoyed this movie because I am a World War Two buff. It isn't Oscar material nor is it anything like Saving Private Ryan but it's a great film. I also noticed from the "making-of" documentary on the DVD that it was a Mormon-made film. It surprised me because I wouldn't expect a movie made by the LDS to have ANY kind of cursing. Still, the movie wasn't preachy about Mormonism and it has quite a bit of Biblical content in it. What I did like about it was that Deacon admitted to being pure before getting married, in fact, he never even kissed his wife until the wedding. There were a few things I didn't like: the profanity, even though it was mild, and mild inaccuracies between the kinds of rifles used by the German and US armies. The Germans used a rifle called the Kar 98 and the U.S. used one called the M1 Garand and the two seemed to have the same bolt-action even though they are two completely different rifles. On the documentary, the filmmakers refer to the German army as the "SS Army." Although the SS did serve, militarily speaking, it didn't make up the entire German army. The SS, for the most part, was a paramilitary group split into three branches (military, administrative/political services, and terrorism). Still, it's a fine production and sort of a PG-13 "version" of Saving Private Ryan and a great watch for those who cannot stand excessive amounts of gore.
 

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