Pluskylang Great Film overall

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

zkonedog I first watched "The Lost Battalion" in the early 2000s and had remembered it as being an excellent World War I film. After a recent viewing, however, I came to discover that this movie has not aged very well at all.For a basic plot summary, "Lost Battalion" tells the story of Major Charles Whittlesey (Rick Schroder), who finds his WWI battalion trapped behind enemy lines in the Argonne Forest of France, 1918, during the first World War. Despite being lied to by his commanding officers and under constant German pressure, Whittlesey must find a way to keep his men together and hold their ground until reinforcements can arrive.There are three easily-identifiable problems with "Lost Battalion" that prevent it from being a true cinematic classic:The first is just sheer production value. It was pretty good for A&E 20 years ago, but it has very much of a low-budget feel now. Perhaps if it were to be converted to Blu Ray that would help. I know that it can't help the time in which it was made, but because the characters aren't all that great (see below), it really has nothing else to stand on except visuals.Secondly, it really tries to copy "Saving Private Ryan" in terms of that battle scenes. Once again, I get it...that was the "thing to do" for war films of that era, but there's a reason "Ryan" lives on while others fade away. It's because that was a great all-around movie. Too many people just remember the Omaha Beach scenes and forget that it truly was a cinematic masterpiece. "Lost Battalion" needed to take a different direction to distinguish itself.Finally, the major problem with this film is that it doesn't spend nearly enough time (or any time, really), delving into character development or "bigger concept" issues. It is content to just kind of walk through the key events and only pay lip service to some great opportunities, like Schroder's character, the diversity of the platoon, and the potentially corruption of the upper military brass. All those concepts "get a look", so to speak, but only "a look". Nothing to really make you think or feel invested in the proceedings.Simply put, "The Lost Battalion" is very much a paint-by-numbers war action flick. It contains very little real drama...only relying on the tried and true "brutality of combat" trope to pull it through. In a post-"Private Ryan" cinematic environment, however, combined with low production values, that just isn't going to cut it anymore. I won't quite drop it down to a bottom- feeding 1 star, but I would give it 1.5 stars if able. It's a product of its times and very little else.

GUENOT PHILIPPE Well, I am not a historian, especially about WW1. And I read many good comments on IMDb, just before watching this movie. I guess everything is quite accurate, very well documented by the makers of this film, with great care. I won't argue about the quality of this tale inspired from actual events. It is amazingly described: characters, sets, brutal, fierce, bloody fights, men to men, face to face, in a total blood and guts orgy of violence. I think there will be a before and an after SAVING PRIVATE RYAN in the war movie history. I mean about the fighting sequences.But something bothers me, in this feature, annoys me at a scale you can't even imagine. The screenplay emphasizes too much on the good Americans vs bad - ugly - Germans. Not Nazis, in WW1, YET...I think that in war, there is no good soldiers and evil ones; except maybe concerning WW2 with the SS elite Nazis troops, guilty of thousands of bloody slaughters. Back to this film, I insist on this because I know the film makers could have done something different. Only show the audience exactly what happened, without trying to make us think this instead of that. That's my own opinion. And, I repeat, it remains a good war movie.

daallen The Lost Battalion of WW I. The original battle this film is based on, which produced no less than seven Medals of Honor and numerous Distinguished Service Crosses, took place in the Argonne Forest in France during the waning months of WW I. It was part of the final great Allied push known as the Meuse- Argonne Offensive (Sept-Nov 1918). The Battalion was cut off for nearly a week, from the evening of 2 October until early morning 8 October, when elements of the 77th Division AEF were able to break through German lines to the south of the battalions position and relieve and reinforce their position.The battalion itself, actually a combination of three battalions (six companies of the 308th, one from 307th, and two companies from 306th MGB) entered the Argonne with nearly 600 able-bodied men on the 2nd, and left with less than 200 unscathed on the 8th. The atrocities they endured and the heroism exhibited is self-evident, without the need of embellishment, which is precisely what this film does.It may be somewhat unfair to bash this film universally, which is why I gave it a rating of three stars rather than one. The cinematography was excellent and the acting was good if not great. I'm not certain if I would have cast Rick Schroder as Major Wittlesey, a result of trying to garner a larger audience through name recognition rather than on the merit of subject alone. Unnecessary and a mistake in my opinion. I also understand this is a made for TV film, lacking a big budget and aimed at smaller audiences. But the flaws in this film aren't budget related. They are a direct result of historical inaccuracies and bad dialogue.While the individual soldiers involved and timeline seem to be fairly accurate to what I've read, the writers have taken a great deal of liberty in mixing up certain events and the players involved. "Major" Prinz was presumably a Lieutenant for one, and it was a wounded private who was captured and returned (reluctantly) to Major Wittlesey with a request of surrender, not Lt. Leak. The plane shot down was a two-seat De Haveland DH-4 biplane with a pilot and navigator, each awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, not a single-seat with only a pilot. Might sound nit-picky, but these guys are heroes and major inaccuracies like these do them an injustice, in my opinion.Plus, the six-seven day nightmare seemed to take place over only a day or two in the film. Bad editing may be the culprit, although it is possible the script was light to begin with. I imagine it's pretty tough to condense all that the battle entailed into a hour and thirty minute movie, but it can be done. Perhaps throttling back on some of the campy dialogue may have provided the time for a more accurate portrayal. You get the sense that the film is trying to shove honor, moral courage and heroism down your throat by telling you how heroic everyone is over and over and over, rather than just demonstrating it and allowing you to form your own opinion.If you have absolutely no knowledge of the battle, have no interest in historical accuracy, and are looking to kill an hour and a half of your time you may find the film enjoyable. The cinematography was great, acting fair even good in parts, but the end result is a skewed portrayal of the actual events that took place and cheapens the memories of those involved.3/10

jesseaa330 well first of all who ever said that uniforms weren't accurate wow! you are a genius!! they can't be correct, it is a chargeable offense. impersonating military officer!!!! so the movie can never be 100% because who remembers what exactly is said and done in battle? and people standing up during fire...it looks like squad rushes to me which is still used in todays military so you really are an uneducated person. the movie is as accurate as law allows it to be. i believe it was a pretty good movie, the actors did a decent job, there are some inaccuracies ( a private yells at a captain, that would not happen in almost any situation, at least not in the us armed forces) and they did take a little dramatic liberties with conversations and personalities but overall it is a good movie and gives a good picture of the military abilities during WWI