Starting off with that forgettable title, this is a creaky drama that plods blandly through the fictional story of a Belgian farmer leading his village’s resistance to a plundering unit of Germans at the outbreak of the first world war. It all feels a bit familiar, and matters are not helped by the fact that the actors playing Belgians and Germans are all speaking in English in an assortment of accents. Oddly, some accents are more accenty than others; the German characters are all unmistakably German.
Game of Thrones’s Iain Glen is the film’s heavyweight, bringing a muscular presence to the role of the farmer, Leonard Lambert. At the beginning of the film, Leonard’s biggest worry is his son’s romance with the posh doctor’s daughter. But worse is to come when Germans march into the village en route to invading France. The German commander (Philippe Brenninkmeyer) gives orders to his men to take only what’s necessary, no bloodshed. That’s ignored by his own son Laurentz (Joe Anderson), a character in the cinematic tradition of swaggeringly evil German officers, a cruel sadist who commits a terrible atrocity. It’s the movie’s best scene, shockingly killing off a character I’d complacently assumed would be in it for the duration. The violence itself is muted; this is screen warfare at its most tactful, eyes averted from the grisly bits.
