Through decades of cinema and popular media, there has been
no more popular historical figure to exercise catharsis upon than the Nazi. And
why would it be otherwise? Considering all the vile acts committed by National
Socialism, it’s all too good to see the likes of Hugo Stiglitz, Steve Rogers,
BJ Blazkowicz, and Clint Eastwood employ all kinds of machines that kill
fascists. And that brings us to the latest B-flick of sorts produced by JJ
Abrams—Overlord.
I must admit, after The Cloverfield Paradox, I wasn’t really
looking forward to it on first glance. There’s been a fair few flicks involving
Nazis, anachronistic uber-tech, and gore, from Outpost, to Iron Sky, and
Frankenstein’s Army, and let’s just say they’ve been of extremely variable
quality. Expecting Overlord to be something on that level, through word of
mouth I decided to give it a try, and was pleasantly surprised.
Set hours before the D-Day landings in 1944, the film
focuses on Jovan Adepo as a US paratrooper sent behind enemy lines in France to
disable a supposed radar outpost. And let’s get one thing out of the way—you
don’t really have to be an expert on social relations and American military
policy at the time to notice that an African-American like his character
probably wouldn’t be in the unit he is. It’s no real dealbreaker considering what
sort of film this ultimately is, but as it isn’t even given a token mention, it
did feel a little odd. Perhaps originally they were going for more of a
flat-out alternate history, but whatever.
Before long, him and the surviving members of his platoon
are holed up in a French village with local partisan Mathilde Oliver, and
tensions are rising with intelligence attaché Wyatt Russell. The latter is son
of the legendary Kurt Russell, and along with the rest of the cast, brings just
the right level of intensity to make everything believable despite what’s going
on. The characters are fairly familiar archetypes, from the green private to
the wise-ass corporal, but it’s done well enough to be enjoyable nevertheless.
Something that, as I found, describes the film as a whole.
And then there’s Pilou Asbaek as the Nazi officer
overlooking the garrison and the foul experiments it conducts—slimy, sadistic,
and gleeful in his atrocities, like any black-clad SS son of a bitch should be.
Having half of his face blown off doesn’t keep him from exuding pure arrogant
evil, and it makes the punishment he does get all so satisfying.
That brings us to the special effects—yeah, there’s some
drops of CGI gore, but there’s enough real explosions, prosthetics, and
practical effects to make it an actually fairly decent looking film. A few
shots are pretty striking for something like this, and the environments all
look authentic, from the wood-clad French village to the mouldy stone walls of
the Nazi labs. This is all complemented by the constant, pounding ambient
soundtrack of Jed Kurzell, which does its job of keeping the claustrophobic,
tense atmosphere ratched up like a knife constantly poised behind you.
There are a few oddities. The characters are stuck in a not
exactly soundproofed house for a lot of it in close proximity to German
soldiers but don’t really bother keeping their voices down—a minor thing, but
they spend enough time doing it that I got to noticing it. Likewise, the climax
of the film could’ve gone a bit more gonzo—let’s just say some promises of a
brand new army for the Reich are somewhat underwhelming.
All in all, for a Nazi-splattering B-flick, Overlord doesn’t
really do much new, but what it does, it does with enough production value and
sincerity that I got a decent kick out of it. Catch it where you can and grab
some popcorn.
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