Overlord – a review

A platoon of soldiers are parachuting into enemy territory to destroy a radio tower on top of a church. Once landed they find far more than they have bargained for as the evil oppressors' scientists have tapped into something vile and unholy.

Overlord began as a hard sell for me. The first fifteen minutes alone are filled to the brim with eye-rolling moments. The obvious one being the American tendency to rewrite history. African-American soldiers were rare in WOII (only 125.000 according to Wikipedia) and that is without the racist segregation they endured.

But I could’ve lived with that if the characters actually behaved like soldiers.

It gets worse

The most basic of military tactics are forgotten almost instantly. The main character removes his helmet for no logical reason. Then he and his platoon stomps around in enemy territory while having loud conversations. Not to mention the brilliant idea to walk through an open field instead of hiding in the tree line.

Okay, so we’ve got incapable soldiers and creative history lessons. Again that would’ve been fine if the characters were interesting. Unfortunately, they’re not!

There’s no intriguing back-story, character-motivation or any of that. Basically Overlord offers a bunch of archetypes (the loudmouth, the romantic, the tough guy) thrown into the mix together. Most of the characters are, in fact, actually more annoying than intriguing.

Then, in some leap of logic, the movie feels the need to explain to the audience that Nazi’s aren’t nice people (being mean to a little kid). This I found rather strange because, after all, they are bleeding Nazi’s. Why does the movie go all out to emphasize their villainy?

Could it get even worse?

Scriptwriting then. That’s some insane creative writing across the board. Two examples:

1. We knocked out the head-Nazi do we A) kill him with a knife, strangulation or go all ‘The hateful eight’ on him? Or, B) we tie him up so he can escape later in the movie?

2. A character needs to enter the enemy base do we A) make it part of his plan. Or, B) let a dog chase him into a moving truck.

Again this soldier-extraordinaire is walking in the middle of the road.

And then there are the clichés like: everybody speaking English. Enemy soldiers being absent when important plot-points are being discussed. The inclusion of the local woman who happens to move the plot forwards. The heroic sacrifice. People getting the drop on somebody. The (numerous) just-in-time-saves. Or, my personal favourite, the American-super-soldiers-who-can-kill-tons-of-Nazi’s-and-somehow-survive.  

By the end of this World-War-II-movie-cliché-train I was convinced that Overlord would offer up a twist that reveals some stoned gamer trying to retell the story of Return to Castle Wolfenstein to his friends and failing.

I can’t be that terrible can it?

There must be something I liked about Overlord?

Well, the gore is fun –if you like such a thing (I don’t care much about it- though I did enjoy the literal talking head). The scares are mostly of the ‘Boo-calibre’; but thankfully not overdone. And there are two clever shots in the movie: ‘the first parachute jump’ and the ‘base escape’. But that is mostly it.

The rest of this movie is just an insane rehash of hateable card-board characters with a ramshackle cliché-filled plot to get them from A to B. It's not even silly fun, but annoying.

Yes the movie is that terrible; I’m amazed about it.

Overlord truly is a terrible, terrible movie. There are no two ways about it for me. I would only recommend this movie to those people who like to (out loud) predict what is going to happen next.

Usually these persistent bastards people are wrong in their prediction. But even they can’t go wrong with seeing everything Overlord has to offer a mile away. If they can stay awake that long that is.