Saints and Soldiers (War Film)

Saints and Soldiers (War Film)

I generally do not seek out to watch war films, as they tend to be very sad and leave me with lots of ethical questions. Also, a lot of war movies tend to have the same type of plot and message, using gore to get the point across which I do not enjoy seeing. Keeping this in mind, as I chose to watch Saints and Soldiers, because the topic of World War II intrigues me and it had good reviews, I was not really expecting to get much out of the movie that I had not seen before. As the movie depicts a group of Allied soldiers trying to get secret information to a large stationed army while also dodging Germans, it was nothing I hadn't seen before. To me, the first half of was a little slow compared to the rest of the movie as characters were not introduced in much detail. However, I did like how the movie didn't give me all the information on the characters right off the bat. It gave background on the characters in little pieces so that eventually everything made sense. For example, I liked how the movie portrayed Deacon as kind of crazy as he was having hallucinations, only to later reveal that there was a reason behind them. This helped to create more sympathy towards not only Deacon, but also the other characters. I also liked how the movie, even though it had a lot of action, took time to give little details about each character at some point that were not huge, important details but instead little aspects of their lives that let me think of the characters as more than just soldiers. Of course, since it was a war movie, many of the characters died, which even though i expected I was still sad to witness. I thought that the character development towards the end of the movie was one of the best aspects of the film, as it showed how Gould, who hated Deacon for most of the movie, was impacted by Deacon and ending up feeling very close to him. Gould transformed from a selfish soldier to one who was willing to stay behind with Deacon and see beyond himself. Overall, I give Saints and Soldiers a 7 out of 10.