Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

sddavis63 So the story is entirely fictional. Well, not entirely, I suppose. There really was an Operation Valkyrie - a failed attempt by the military to assassinate Hitler in the weeks after D-Day. Beyond that, this is pretty much fictional. The plot has a number of high-ranking Nazi officials along with a German Catholic Bishop planning to make off with a huge amount of gold bullion, escape in a submarine to Argentina and, with this war lost, try to establish the Fourth Reich. Yes, there were a number of high ranking Nazis who escaped to Argentina as the war came to an end. Yes, the Catholic Church had some involvement in those escapes. But there's no evidence that I know of that any huge amount of German gold went with them or that there was any intention or desire to start a "Fourth Reich." Most of them just wanted to escape prosecution for war crimes. So, there's a grain of truth to this story (as there generally is with all legends) but it is a fictional story - and to its credit, it makes no claim otherwise. It opens with captions offering a description of the anti-Hitler German underground - although it overstates the significance of the movement: the vast majority of Nazis (and even every day Germans) remained loyal to Hitler, or at least unwilling to do anything against him - and it closes with captions describing the exodus of some Nazis to South America, and then offering some thoughts about the co-operation between the Americans and the Soviets during the war.Now, there's the point of the story, I think. Using the aftermath of the failed Operation Valkyrie as the context, the movie really offers a portrayal of a group of American (and one British) members of a special ops team parachuted into East Prussia to extract an anti-Nazi German officer who has information valuable to the Allies who are forced to co-operate with a Soviet special ops team working in the same area. The American team is led by Sean Patrick Flanery as Capt. Blackburn and the Soviet team by Pasha D. Lychnikoff as Maj. Kulkov (who I recognized from his turn as an astronaut on a few episodes of The Big Bang Theory.) Personally, I thought Lychnikoff offered the stronger performance of the two. Distrustful of each other at first, the two teams have to begin to work together against their common enemy (and, as they were deep behind enemy lines, their common threat.) A lot of that is pretty typical war movie stuff. There are a lot of firefights, and most of them are entirely unbelievable as this small number of Allied soldiers repeatedly takes down innumerable German soldiers. But it's a war movie. You expect that.The most intriguing character in the movie was probably Elke - the very pretty secretary of one of the German officers seeking escape to Argentina - who was actually a part of the Kreisau Circle, which was in fact one of the major anti-Hitler conspiracies. She was played by the very pretty Julie Engelbrecht, an actress largely unknown on this side of the Atlantic, most of whose work has been done in Germany. She is, indeed, very pretty - and she does a good job in the role, and I thought Elke was an important character who in a way represented to me the future of Germany, torn between East and West. Actually, the whole movie seems to be a sort of setting up of the Cold War more than counting down the last days of World War II.No one is going to watch this and think it's one of the great World War II movies. The whole story is just a bit too outlandish to be taken seriously. But it has its moments of excitement. (6/10)

jstorchan-48111 It was OK, unfortunately it seemed the allies had unlimited ammo. The StG 44 German Automatic weapon only has a 20 round magazine. It was pretty funny that it seemed like it was unlimited.Tom Sizemore had a rank of master sergeant but was wearing an officers uniform with officer insignia with the Master sergeant rank on the sleeve. you would think they would have done more research. The Germans looked like they had proper rank and uniforms.The movie was entertaining, I really like the fact that so many Germans were killed.I thought the acting was OK, nothing spectacular. I liked the movie.

lavatch As if to capitalize on the success of the Tom Cruise film of Operation Valkyrie, the conspiracy among the German military to assassinate Hitler, "Beyond Valkyrie: Dawn of the 4th Reich" is an embarrassing attempt at a sequel.The gist of the film is that an elite group of British-American parachuters land in Germany and unite forces with members of the Red Army to thwart an insidious plan of some Nazis to escape with a horde of gold bullion, flee to Argentina, and seek to revive the Third Reich, after the failed attempt to kill Hitler in Operation Valkyrie.The most ludicrous of the characters in the film is a high-ranking member of the Catholic church, dressed to the nines in his purple church vestments, who is accompanying the Nazis on their trip to South America. Was the prelate intended to provide legitimacy to the restored Reich in Argentina? To add even less credibility to the already far-fetched plot, the fight sequences in this film invariably pitted a large number of Nazi soldiers from the Wehrmacht against the Mission Impossible team of allies. Invariably, the Nazis were incompetent and somehow outwitted by the elite allied team that included a beautiful blond German woman who was working undercover to aid in the overthrow of Hitler.The film unwittingly turned to comedy, especially in the climactic scene when the action converges on Königsberg and a German submarine intended to carry the Nazis and their gold bullion to Argentina. The ending was fitting for a film that fizzled from start to finish.

Boots7777 Please stop with Tom Sizemore. He was once great and now he is just plain bad. Having him in a movie will make me actively avoid the movie from now on. I was once a fan, but this is the last time I will be faked into watching another movie where he gives a horrible performance. And on top of that he's hardly in it. He has completely lost it. This should've been an easy job to give a good performance, but he's embarrassing. Stop casting him. I'm done. And "Beyond" Sizemore, the entire cast is horrible except for Stephen Lang. I mean where did they find these actors. They all have frosted blonde hair and look ridiculous. I didn't believe for a minute they were from the time period. They acted like Hollywood actors -- soft, sensitive, metro sexual. Men that fought this war were men. They had some cajones. These guys were limp. And now to the movie. It was bad. Not one single exciting moment. And the West meets East thing felt like it was pandering and stupid. I could go on and on and on, but I will just say this -- go watch "Saving Private Ryan" or "Where Eagles Dare" or "Band Of Brothers." Stay away from this sophomoric slop!