Steineded How sad is this?

Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Leofwine_draca ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT is the second adaptation of the famous novel about German soldiers fighting in the trenches during WW1. This one goes for the lengthy epic route and has to be commended for featuring authentic-looking battle sequences on what must have been a tight budget. What I most liked about this film is that most WW1 movies feature the big battles in the middle of the night, using the cover of darkness to hide limitations, whereas all of the big scenes in this one take place in broad daylight and they're all the better for it.An ensemble cast has been assembled in this movie and most of them do a decent job. I wasn't too keen on Richard Thomas's hero, as I found him oddly muted and difficult to root for. Thomas was much better a decade later in the likes of IT and STALKING LAURA (still his finest moment as an actor, I reckon). Still, Ernest Borgnine is fine as the old lag buddy, and Ian Holm has an excellent supporting role as a postman who becomes a conscript. Watch out for Dai Bradley, the kid from KES, all grown up and fighting it out on the battlefield. British viewers may get a kick out of Michael Sheard (GRANGE HILL's Mr. Bronson) playing the father while old-time starlet Patricia Neal is the mother.

WilliamMortensenVaughan I should have known I wouldn't like this movie, because Richard Thomas stars in it. I found "The Waltons" too intensely boring to watch a full episode. My wife and I tried to watch this film on VHS, and made it through his character's college graduation, military training, military service in the trenches, hospital stay and arrival, in what we presume was his hometown when his service ended. We couldn't believe the movie wasn't over yet, so we went to bed and decided not to watch the rest of it. It was just too unbearable.Having graduated from two Boot Camps (U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Army), I could relate somewhat to the WWI Nazi version. Fortunately for me, my military combat service was less severe.I'm giving this three stars because it shows the tedium ad nauseam of military service realistically, and because I always enjoy watching Ernest Borgnine's performances.

Michael DeZubiria It is strange that a made-for-TV-remake (and yes, this is definitely a remake) of the Best Picture winner from 1930 should be so easily as good, and probably better, than the original. This is a special situation because most of what needed improvement in the original was not things that required special effects or much movie magic (the battle scenes, for example, are outstanding in both films), but the realism of it all, specifically things like life on the battlefield, realistic dialogue, and clumsy thematic delivery.FIrst of all, the movie starts right out on the battlefield and is pretty impressive right away. Donald Pleasance is wonderful as the German propaganda teacher buttering the young men up for enlistment, and very soon you'll notice that a lot of the scenes are taken directly out of the original except, as I mentioned, now the realism is updated, which is extremely important.All Quiet on the Western Front, love it or hate it, is one of the most famous anti-war films/books of all time, and because of that, most of the more memorable scenes in the film are meant to deliver this message, but some work and some don't work so well. There is a scene, for example, where the new recruits line up in front of the train and see the wounded being brought back before their very eyes. It's a moving scene, to be sure, but I imagine removing the badly wounded soldiers right in front of the new soldiers heading to the front lines would have been considered bad taste even during World War I. Especially in propaganda-heavy Germany.Speaking of which, the fact that the movie is told from the German perspective is a bit of a difficult area for the film, since it stars almost entirely American and British actors, and we only know they're German, other than from a background knowledge of the story, because it's mentioned a few times through dialogue.The point of the story is to illustrate the difference between gloriously fighting for your country and the reality of trench-warfare. As soon as the new recruits arrive at the front, Ernest Borgnine, in an exceptional performance as Kat, the most experienced private on the front lines, quickly lets them know that even after all of their training, they don't know a single thing about war ("In training camp they fill you full of fancy information on how to be a soldier. We're going to work hard to forget all that."). While most of the more clunky scenes are smoothed out in this remake, some of them are still pretty obvious. I was happy to see that the scene where Paul Baumer, one of the main characters, kills a Frenchman in hand-to-hand combat and then bitterly remorses the act afterwards is changed, but it's not changed much. He mortally injures the man and is then stuck in a hole with him until morning, when he finally dies. He does give a bit of a ham-handed speech, but at least it's more realistic than the original. More importantly, this time it takes the focus away from the pointlessness of war deaths and turns it to the politicians, who come across as warmongers ("We could be brothers. But they never want us to know that. They never want us to know..."). Makes you shudder to think of them generating hatred among young men like puppet-masters so they can send them over to further their agendas. The end of the film faithfully re-creates the end of the original, with Baumer taking a trip home due to an injury, only to be confronted with the reality that his country is completely removed from what is really happening on the western front. It's strange though, that when he embarks on his 16 days of convalescent leave, he does so in full battle gear - helmet, grenades, rifle and everything. Seems like that might be a little unnerving to the public.Nevertheless, the movie certainly gets its point across, but it still leaves me with the feeling that it can still be so much more. It is a very effective piece of anti-war cinema, but even with all of the improvements since the 1930 version, it is still not authentic.

MARIO GAUCI This is one of three DVD editions of made-for-TV movies that I rented in order to pay belated tribute to Oscar-winning director Mann who died last month (the others being HEIDI [1968] and JANE EYRE [1970]).I'd always resisted watching this version of the celebrated Erich Maria Remarque novel, because I thought that it couldn't possibly hold a candle to the classic 1930 original directed by Lewis Milestone; needless to say, this turned out to be true but, even if the edition I watched was trimmed by some 20 minutes from the full-length 150-minute broadcast, the film survives as a pretty decent rendering of the novel's anti-war sentiment. Combining meticulous period detail with elaborate battle sequences and reasonable narrative skill (not least in the way it adopts flashbacks throughout the first half), it nevertheless lacks the overall impact of Milestone's classic mainly because of a bland young cast (Richard Thomas as Paul Baumer may be closer to the character's age as depicted in the novel, but he never achieves the haunting quality of Lew Ayres' performance in the original). It falls especially short when directly re-creating memorable scenes or moments from the 1930 film (such as a pair of disembodied hands hanging onto a barbed-wire fence, or when Baumer spends the night in a foxhole beside a French soldier slowly dying from his bayonet wound); the famous ending has also been slightly altered…but, then, there are other good scenes here: notably, when a number of horses are wounded during an air-raid – which causes consternation to one of the soldiers who had been a farmer as a civilian – and the gas attack, which would mean a very painful death for anyone succumbing to it.The supporting cast is a distinguished one, led by a fine Ernest Borgnine as the seasoned Katczinky; Ian Holm is the iron-fisted Himmelstoss; Donald Pleasence the fanatical schoolteacher; and Patricia Neal has a bit as Baumer's sick mother. As I said earlier on, Paul Monash's script manages to capture Remarque's basic idea of a country's youth having their innocence despoiled through combat; similarly, John Coquillon's grimy cinematography is instrumental in bringing out the proverbial 'war is futile' atmosphere.