Movie Review: Lucky Strike

 

Michael's Movie Grade: B+

An excellent WWII thriller. 

This film tells the true story of a man who found himself alone behind German lines after all his me die. 

There may have been many movies about a solider behind enemy lines, but this movie manages to stand out due to very strong filmmaking. The film pulls you into the emotion of the story in surprisingly subtle ways at times. One of the most effective ways this is shown is shown through the film being in three different color pallets. The opening prologue is in black and white to reflect how gloomy and foggy the setting is. The scenes with our main character behind enemy lines are in muted colors to emphasis the horror he is going through. Meanwhile the non-war scenes in the U.S. are in bright colors as a contrast. Even if you don't notice this while watching the film, it is something you will feel. Another clever bit of filmmaking is that after the prologue, we see everything from our main character's point of view. This allows us to experience the tension of what he is going through. This is even shown through the lack of subtitles. Subtitles are under characters speaking in German in the prologue. However, once we start following our main character, we no longer see any subtitles when characters speak German or French. This works perfectly as we do not have any information that our main character (who doesn't speak German or French) has. Since we on the same level of understanding as him, it becomes easier to see things from his eyes. One of the film's greatest assets is Scott Eastwood who is wonderful in the lead role. 

This movie does have moments of corny dialogue and moments that stretch believability too far for a movie based off a true story (this is especially true of the playing dead scene). Still these flaws can't ruin this very well-made movie.