Pretty Good

Don't listen to the negative reviews

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

A bit like a female-cast, French-with-subtitles version of The Dirty Dozen, with just a smidgen of a James Bond flick. Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers it ain't, but it's a good WW II story. A story about brave women, and only one feminist line in it ("You would never have done this to men," in a situation in which, the guy would certainly have done the same to men.

Sophie Marceau leads an excellent cast in this gripping movie.Based on true events it begins in 1944, a group of French servicewomen and resistance fighters are enlisted into the British Special Operations Executive commando group under the command of Louise Desfontaines and her brother Pierre.Their mission, to rescue a British army geologist caught reconnoitering the beaches at Normandy, and to kill a German SS colonel who is close to figuring out the imminent secret of D-Day, proves to be emotional and brutal.The film moves at a good pace and is so well acted you feel for the characters.

This movie begins promisingly with a montage of images (during the titles) that squarely establishes the ideal of highlighting the role women played in WW2. Lets be frank, the defeat of Hitler depended on armies of women mostly on the "Home Front": in factories, on farms, as pilots ferrying aircraft, working in all the roles previously reserved for men, apart from the merchant navy, mining and, barring a few exceptions, combat.This film of course takes the "glamorous" option of concentrating on those exceptions. Exceptional people did extraordinary things during that war and they deserve every admiration, especially as they could receive no acknowledgement at the time. The women who in real life were infiltrated into NAZI occupied territory deserve their story be told. Unfortunately this film doesn't do that. Instead its a complete fiction.The entire scenario is hogwash. If a reconnaissance operative had been caught as is the central plot driver, the standard procedure would have been to kill him to protect secrecy, not send over a whole team including a man who knows all the secrets that needed protecting and thereby jeopardising the very secrets that the mission was to protect. The likeliest course of action at the time was to bomb the hospital into oblivion killing everyone and thereby protecting those secrets. Only an idiot would have put together the cock-a-mamie enterprise depicted. To ensure a hospitalised agents death would have required only one assassin timed to precede the bombing and willing to die if necessary in the process. Not a team of five.What is worse is the tendency that seems increasingly prevalent in French movies of inserting gratuitous and tasteless scenes of a sexually provocative nature that do nothing to advance the story, are entirely unnecessary and, in this context, rather sick. The worst here being the perverse sexualisation of a woman of necessity taking her own life, turned into a kind of sick striptease for no audience but the viewer, overladen with a corrupted form of specious religious overtones that only cheapen the act and border upon blasphemy. It may not matter to non-believers, but as the victim was depicted as devout, that seems more of an abuse and an insult than a gesture of respect.Compounding these deficiencies is the blurring together of a real project and fictitious characters, their names borrowed from real people who had nothing to do with it. The Oberst Karl Heinrich shown here never existed but the real life Karl Heindrich was actually one of the plotters who attempted to kill Hitler, not prevent the Allied invasion.Then the project herself is abused and misrepresented. It wasn't called "Phoenix" but "Mulberry" (which I had lectured into me throughout my childhood by a man who had actually worked on it). It was so secret that Grman officers never had suspicions of its relevance to D Day. Those sent to study Normandy beaches (such as the Geologist in the movie) would have had no knowledge of the project, only the task of examining the suitability of shorelines for landings. Mulberry was not even related to that, the caissons only being taken over four days after the invasion. The project was indeed critical to the invasion however, permitting the creation of a logistic supply line. However, contrary to the impression given at the close of the movie, the Americans had little to do with this. Of the two harbours created, the British one was used to great success whilst the American one was misused, not supported by US leadership, allowed to fall apart and was swiftly abandoned. The project was British, not American, yet it is presented otherwise in this movie.Altogether, the movie is a disservice to the truth and a dishonourable reflection on the real life heroines of WW2. I nonetheless give it a "5" because, in spite of this, it cannot be denied that it is very well made and gripping entertainment. It could have been so much better, especially had the final dedication been to the real female agent who was the inspiration for the story, as opposed to one of the fictitious characters depicted.

There is no doubt this is a very well-made movie, good cast and generally good handwork. The women are believable in their roles and the conflict is an exciting one. Look elsewhere for a synopsis. But... (potential spoiler) This movie starts out as a female agent movie but towards the end it has become rather a film about female being dressed naked, tortured, beaten. Which makes it into a very sad movie indeed. Namely because women being dressed naked tortured and beaten is not good entertainment, at least for those of us who love women. I present this as an "alternative view" review, because other people might say it would be necessary to show the cruelty of war, others might say it's not over the top cruel... the scenes could be worse and would have to be more explicit detailed if you where to call it a bad movie. There is many who likes this movie. But be warned... you might be offended, you might find it to be bad taste... at least thats my conclusion.