There they go again… Nazi's causing a
ruckus. We've seen Nazi's do some wicked things recently
be it turning themselves into zombies, setting up moon bases,
reanimating the dead, not to mention the usual stuff such as
trying to clone Hitler or watching Dr. Mengele and his wicked
dental techniques but today we have Nazi's with a time
machine. Even under the best of circumstances,
Nazi's with a time machine can't be a good thing. But
the real question is if this movie 'The 25th Reich' a good
thing? Well it certainly does struggle at times, no
doubt about that, but it does have its charms.
The year is 1943, World War II is raging like crazy and a crew
of soldiers led by current B-movie star turned real soldier
Capt. Donald O'Brien (Jim Knobeloch) is leading a mission in
Australia to bring back a pair of escaped Pumas. Just
roll with it. Along for the ride with Captain O'Brien
are his Sergeant Major Carl Reaver (Serge De nardo), the
completely racist corporal Updike (Jack Wyld), Italian
American Rifleman Pvt. Roberto Barelli (Angelo Salamanca) and
the fresh faced Private Ishbak (Dan Balcaban) who by chance
happens to be Jewish and thus subjected to Cpl. Updike's
relentless tirade of assaults against every non-white,
non-protestant person on the planet earth.
The weird thing about this Puma Recovery Mission is that our
soldiers are stuck carrying this huge device which they are
told… heck, I forgot what they were told what that thing was
supposed to be, but it's a time machine. Totally a time
machine.
So why would one need a time machine, in the middle of
Australia, in 1943, in the middle of World War II? It's
complicated, overly so, but I think it has something to do
with a spaceship and advanced technology and shifting the tide
of the war or
something. How those in the know
figured out there was an abandoned spaceship trapped in 10,000
BC or somewhere around there is beyond me, and they might've
told us how they knew, but I forgot that part as well.
So one day our soldiers are in the Australian bush hunting
Puma, then the next day they are way back in the time before
man getting hunted by the Puma's gargantuan ancestors, giant
mosquitoes, and we're not even going to get into the giant
robots that like to anally rape closeted homosexuals.
Again… just roll with it.
As it turns out there is an
alien space ship somewhere way back in the past, but it looks
like we've been bamboozled, hoodwinked and led astray.
Nazi's causing a ruckus. The question is, with the
Nazi's getting a spaceship back in the B.C., altering the war
outcome in the 1943 present, can our soldiers in the year of
2243… roll with it… reverse the Nazi madness? Who
knows? Nobody knows. It doesn't look like nobody
will ever know.
Just so you know, and I'm on record for this, I'm not a big
fan of movies that don't end. Particularly when the
follow up for this movie that didn't actually end will
probably never arrive. The ending for that first 'Lord
of the Rings' movie, while also annoying, delivered some
solace in that we were told that all the movies were finished
already but 'The 25th Reich: War With God' is about as shaky
in coming about as any movie ever.
With that annoyance now clearly stated and placed to the side,
the movie we did get, as directed by Stephen Amis, is a mixed
bag of Australian low budget ambition. There are a
couple of things that work very well in this mixed bag, one
being star Jim Knobeloch and his impressive channeling of the
ghost of Lee Marvin as the grizzled, tough leader of a ragtag
group of WWII soldiers. In a movie betting on authentic
performances to sell us on its period era war style, part of
this mixed bag of stuff we were talking about, Knobeloch was
on his A-game. Also pretty cool was the look of the
movie, and though I'm pretty sure it was shot on something
that was digital in nature, the movie still had the over
saturated color look of those 1950's war movies which also
helped solidify the atmosphere I think the filmmakers were
going for.
But if ever there was movie whose ambition and budget were so
far apart that they couldn't even reach each other via
telephone, then 'The 25th Reich' could be the poster child for
that movie. A large portion of the movie consisted of
our soldiers walking in the woods exchanging witty banter with
each other, and watching people walk in the woods has never
made for the most thrilling cinema. The witty banter
should've helped move things along but not all of our actors
had the same grip on their character as Mr. Knobeloch did, and
the occasional Australian accent did tend to creep up on our
allegedly American soldiers which would momentarily pull us
out of the moment.
But where walking in the woods exchanging witty batter is
relatively inexpensive, swarms of giant mosquitoes, gargantuan
big cats, spaceships and walking Nazi mechanoids tends to get
pricey, and this is where the ambition and the budget were at
odds with each other. The special effects, unfortunately
weren't all that special, and they needed to be better
integrated within the scenery to keep us into the movie as
opposed to taking us out of the movie muttering 'dang, that
big cat looks kind of crappy' or 'dang, why is that robot
raping that dude'. Admittedly the robot rape has little
to do with crappy special effects, just a suspect story angle
which also takes you out of the movie.
We do appreciate the effort and the vision that Amis and his
crew were shooting for, it's just that the execution of the
ambition for the grand vision was little off. That being
said, hopefully this is successful enough that the follow up
eventually gets the green light.
