REVIEW: Saints And Soldiers: The Void (Blu-Ray)

Runtime: 95 Mins
Rated: PG-13
What To Expect: Genuine WW2 armor gets wasted in PG-13 cliché

Another one of those Saint and Soldiers movies came out in August in a limited theatre run, I think it was around the time of The Expendables 3.  I didn’t see it then, but now that I have I can advise anyone who is thinking of doing the same that they should probably think twice.  The first movie was poor, for that reason I did not check out the second, but since this one shares a similar premise to David Ayer’s Fury and I’m sort of an armor nut, I gave this one a shot.  Yes it’s basically a DTV, but I was hoping for at least something like Sahara, a 1995 WW2 TV movie starring Jim Belushi featuring armor as the setup.  Not quite.

This movie, like Fury, sees an American tank crew face poor odds against multiple German tanks in enemy territory at the end of WW2.  The crew loses their commander and an experienced black commander takes his place, to rising racial tension.  The film has political and social commentary ideas above its station, which pretty much blows it, with its sour and cheap melodrama and actors who can’t get a handle on their roles.  When your movie is bush league, you must try to avoid such things and instead focus on giving people what they want!  I’ll never understand this shit, it’s not rocket science.

And it is a pity, because this movie features genuine WW2 armor, for instance not only real M-18 Hell Cat tank destroyers but actual Panzer IV units as well – and you don’t see those in movies too often.  I’ll also give the movie credit for not resorting to shaking the camera, not that the action is in any way impressive though.

One other thing that really needs to be mentioned is that the movie is PG-13.  Big mistake, this is a fucking war movie and in war, guts pave the road and limbs hang from trees, the result of explosions near and far.  This rating is probably what got the makers their limited theatrical run, but obviously, this has come at an expense.

On this Blu-Ray, you can expect poor picture.  Not that sharpness, there’s nothing wrong with that, but the thing is that they went overboard with the Saving Private Ryan washed out look.  There’s a drab, almost grey mist that covers the lens.  I know what they were trying to do, but it is too much.  The extras also feature a whopping single trailer and nothing else.  Now hold on a minute, the producers of this movie can go around gaming websites offering mini documentaries about the tanks, but they can’t put them on this disc?  Fuck off.  For that reason, I’m taking another point off this review.