The Lost Battalion (2001)

Wonderful Movie

Absolutely Fantastic

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It operates within the strictures imposed on a television movie -- not many expensive special effects, no bankable stars, and an overall pallid washed-out quality in the photography. And it doesn't entirely avoid the familiar. One man must read aloud from a bloody bible while the listener dies a Hollywood death. And there is one of those conversations about "why we are here." Occasionally, too, it succumbs to the wobbling camera disease that infected so many productions of the time. There is a weak scene in which a German officer interrogates an American captive. The captive smirks throughout and answers sarcastically. It's not believable. But only ONE slow motion death, and thank heavens for small favors.As Major Charles Whittlesey, commanding a battalion that penetrates the Argonne Forest only to find itself cut off from it own lines, taking massive casualties, running out of essential supplies, Ricky Schroeder has lost his boyish appeal and now, with a pair of spectacles, resembles a real man, something on the order of Jon Voight, only with a less resonant voice. I worked on two TV movies with Schroeder and he's a genuinely nice guy, willing to sit down and chat with humble extras. He should have gone on to decent character roles.But the most striking feature of the film is its outright candor. True, the American troops are portrayed as brave heroes -- but that's what they WERE. Their triumphs were probably helped by the fact that the war would end shortly and many of the German troops had lost their enthusiasm for battle. But when friendly artillery fire rains down on Whittlesey's men -- as it did -- the error is made explicit on screen.And due attention is paid to period detail. No reason to get into it but the rifles are Springfield '03s and some property man actually managed to dig up a disastrous French machine gun called the Chauchat. The pistols used by the Yanks are mostly correct but I doubt anybody ever hit much with them. The Luxembourg locations are properly convincing.Whittlesbey's 77th Division is also historically correct, and so is its character, since most of its men were recruited from the streets of New York. (In the next war the 77th fought in the Pacific and wound up on Okinawa.) Some fun is made of ethnicity and region but it's incorporated into the usual Army banter without which no movie would be complete. A Manhattan Jew trades barbs with an Italian from Brooklyn over which borough has the best food. The names of the principals are real too. It would have been easy to fictionalize much of this and turn it into a talky and mindless feature with flashbacks to the family and girls back home, but the producers decided to handle the story differently. Good for them.

If you can get past the melting-pot platoon clichés, there's a pretty decent movie here. The Lost Battalion tells the story of a unit of American GIs who advance well beyond their support into German-held territory in October, 1918. TLB mixes some Paths of Glory with Saving Private Ryan, but manages to extol the virtues of polyglot GIs in a supremely difficult position: Will they hold together while taking fire from superior forces in the front and callous commanders in the rear?At 90 minutes, the movie is over almost before you really get into it. The narrative spans about six days in the life of 600 men--reduced to barely 200 by the end of the engagement--who act as a "thorn in the side" of a larger, Prussian-led force in the Argonne Forest. They're abandoned by their generals as they make the mistake of advancing to where they're supposed to go, and then having the bad taste not to flee when their support bugs out on both flanks. The movie's strength is how it portrays its clichés--Hey, these aren't clichés about class distinction and combat--this stuff was real! It's a much more watered down type of combat than you would find on the big screen, but the blood and guts--and there's a lot spilled here--doesn't get in the way of watching blue bloods find out what "Italian, Irish, Jew, and Pollack gangsters" can do when they're led well by field-grade officers, and are being taunted and insulted by Prussians and their aristocratic mind-set.Congratulations to the filmmakers! Look for The Lost Battalion on the History Channel or A&E. Watch this and feel proud for more than our men in arms. Feel proud for our society at its best.

After watching this movie I was honestly disappointed - not because of the actors, story or directing - I was disappointed by this film advertisements.The trailers were suggesting that the battalion "have chosen the third way out" other than surrender or die (Polish infos were even misguiding that they had the choice between being killed by own artillery or German guns, they even translated the title wrong as "misplaced battalion"). This have tickled the right spot and I bought the movie.The disappointment started when I realized that the third way is to just sit down and count dead bodies followed by sitting down and counting dead bodies... Then I began to think "hey, this story can't be that simple... I bet this clever officer will find some cunning way to save what left of his troops". Well, he didn't, they were just sitting and waiting for something to happen. And so was I.The story was based on real events of World War I, so the writers couldn't make much use of their imagination, but even thought I found this movie really unchallenging and even a little bit boring. And as I wrote in the first place - it isn't fault of actors, writers or director - their marketing people have raised my expectations high above the level that this movie could cope with.

We are bombarded with movies that show us the amazing skills and qualities of the American soldier, his bravery, determination etc. I'm not trying to deny these facts, but wouldn't it be nice to see, from time to time, a movie about the "others".i mean, they are humans too. I'm kind of tired of seeing the Americans, "good guys" off-course, kicking the asses of everybody. "Enemy at the gates" is an example of a war movie that, despite his lack of American heroes, still had a certain success. So, dear guys from Hollywood, it is possible...As for this movie, i think the words "cliche" or "kitsch" describe it best. i really had to make huge efforts to watch it till the end. same clichés about the ruthless general that send his mens in impossible missions but they fight like lions and achieve victory, gaining the admiration and respect of the enemy and the gratitude of their comrades blablabla. if you really have time to lose, watch this movie. It's not much worse than the other American war movies.