Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Giuseppe Alvaro This is a good movie of men in war, not a war movie Hollywood style. It shows the madness of war and (at the beginning at least) reminds me of the surreal atmosphere of another great movie, "Il deserto dei tartari". El Alamein - Linea di Fuoco is a movie that gives at last some justice to the brave men who fought and died in Africa for their country, at that time led by a dangerous gambler, not because they were fascists (those stayed far from the battlefront) but because they felt it was their duty. They didn't lack courage or skills but the means of more advanced industrial powers - the German-Anglo-Saxon reputation in warfare being largely due to superior production and logistics. Showing how Italy could fall in love for "Il Duce" was clearly out of this movie scope and reach, but perhaps it will help reading again this quotation attributed to a world expert in this field, Herr Hermann Goering: "People can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country". In our days, our leaders do not even have to show us we are being attacked - see headlines for "preemptive war", "Iraq", "Iran"...

stefano66 El Alamein is a movie well deserving of being watched and appreciated. Surely one of the best Italian movies from the turn of the millennium, and a an apt and just requiem for those who gave their lives, or their best years, in the sands of Sahara. The ensemble of imagery and music is haunting enough to give us an idea of what war in the desert was. The director takes no definite political stance, limiting himself to describe things as they historically were for too many of our soldiers and officers. The young student volunteer, Serra, goes to war excited at the prospect of conquering Egypt, but being a well-read, clever boy, soon realizes the failure of Mussolini's army, and the power of the British and Commonwealth enemy. The other roles are a bit more rhetorical, in the sense that they recall some old clichés: the wise sergeant, the numbed-out lieutenant, living in a sort of permanent shell-shock and crushed under his responsibilities. The best part of the movie is the dry (we are in the desert, aren't we?) narration of the soldier's life, made of boredom, heat, dirtiness, thirst and hunger, with sudden moments of absolute panic when the Brits, an ominous presence in the (short) distance, send ahead a marksmen, or launch random artillery or mortar attacks. The night battle scenes are short and frantic, while miles away from the video clip style so dear to Americans. They are made really creepy by a haunting soundtrack, plus some quite gory and realistic depictions of wounds, shell-shock people going crazy and disappearing on the battlefield and so on.It was just and sobering to end the movie on the sight of the memorial to Italian soldiers fallen at Alamein. That's what remains, of all that action, of all those futile efforts to swim against the current of history. A country tragically defeated, since then only partly free, subjected, in one way or another, to its captors, deeply divided and at the same time always ready to the serve the strongest: that has been the enduring legacy of Fascism. Maybe those dead, despite having fought for the wrong side, deserved better: they themselves were the betrayed.

Locomotiva1 How to make a film in Italy.A script that has anything original or "important": war is bad, that's it. But it's a "liberal" point of view, so it's good and it's enough.The same actors seen in every Italian film adding the usual comedian out of a night show (Favino) to have a "known one", and an homage to "bigger names" of the director's circle, giving a cameo to Orlando (Moretti's best one) and Cederna (Salvatore's own).Bad acting: in Italian, every actor murmured in some local "patois", and hardly you can understand what they say. That's a cliché of every Italian war movie, that Italian soldiers uttered strong local accents: war movie or comic film. Not else.Even budget wasn't SO low, no attempt to research what's the right uniforms, vehicles, terms, historical details, as none of the blue-nosed liberal producers wants to talk with the "militarist" who collect or study military history.Spice all with "I'm an artist" attitude, and you have a typical Italian movie.

poe426 It's the day to day effort(s), the gradual grinding down, of the "ignoto" (the "unknown" soldiers) that make wars of attrition like this one worthy of closer scrutiny. It's fertile ground for filmmakers, though it's ground seldom tread. (Most filmmakers opt for grandiose depictions of the Big Battles and totally ignore or dismiss outright the many unsung smaller battles that make up a war.) One of the most effective shorts I ever saw was A TIME OUT FOR WAR. Based on an Ambrose Beirce short story and featuring Barry Atwater (who played the vampire Janos Skorzeny in the original telefilm THE NIGHTSTALKER), A TIME OUT FOR WAR was set during The Civil War and focuses on a couple of Yanks dug in across a small creek from a Rebel soldier. They take pot-shots at one another from time to time in the name of God and country and all that, but finally decide to call a truce long enough to take a dip and get a sip from the aforementioned crick. Things seem to have taken a turn for the civil when one of the Union soldiers finds the water-logged body of a fellow blue-belly in the water. The Reb watches as the two Yankees retreive the dead man... and the short ends with them resuming hostilities. EL ALAMEIN reminds me of that short and, in like fashion, leaves one shaking one's head at the madness of Men who would make war on other Men (for whatever "reason"). Don't miss it.