Saints and Soldiers

March to war: Saints and Soldiers tells a moving story while avoiding clichés

By Anthony Del Valle

For those who used to think that any movie produced by a Mormon Church-affiliated company was likely to be dreck (as I did), Excel Entertainment's Saints and Soldiers (filmed entirely in Utah) should prove quite a surprise. The young director/cinematographer Ryan Little and writers Geoffrey Panos and Matt Whitaker have made a small-scale (under $1 million budget) but immensely moving film that avoids war movie clichés while still giving us, in essence, a typical war movie story.

The plot throws together four American survivors from the 1944 Malmedy Massacre, which left 72 Allied prisoners dead in the Ardennes woods. They're trying to lay low behind enemy lines until a British paratrooper literally falls by their way. He has important intelligence that may greatly affect the Battle of the Bulge, and the four Americans decide to help him reach a command post. Their journey is made more difficult by one solider having once lived in Berlin. He's a loyal American, but has no animal hate for the Germans.

Each of the soldiers is a different type, but their behavior is so specific and organic that you really believe fate just happens to have thrown these five men together. It's no surprise that the script is about man's common brotherhood, but it is a surprise that Little and the writers never push it. They don't try to suck in their audience by lingering over events and emotions.

While the film is cerebral, it's filled with solid action, suspense and poetic visual images (I didn't think World War II had any left). Little is equally competent with his performers, all of whom are unknown and skillfully disappear into their characters.

The result is a gem of a war movie with an unusually convincing reality base. We feel as if there's no distance between us and the fighting men. And that lack of distance is the film's point.