Movie Review: Saints and Soldiers: Airborne Creed

Warning: Spoilers


In contrast to Green Snake, a movie with fantastic special effects but a terrible theme and vile heroine, today, I'd like to review a WWII war movie that didn't look as if it had much of a budget. 

At times the dialogue was clunky, at times the pacing slow, and the special effects were certainly nothing special. There have been plenty of WWII movies, so what made this one stand out?

First of all, this was apparently one of three movies made called Saints and Soldiers. I happened to catch the second one, having not seen the first. This one was Saints and Soldiers: Airborne Creed.

The movie revolves around three men. Some movie time was spent focused on the backstory of a soldier who had a calling to become a pastor. In fact, his mentor tries to talk him out of entering the one, telling him that his calling to serve God is more important than fighting.

The would-be pastor rejects this, deciding that at the moment that the most important thing for him to do is serve in the field as a soldier fighting the Nazis scourge.


The story shows the three main American characters meeting up after each has become separated from his unit following the landing at Normandy. They have to make a series of decisions. Should they detour from their intended rendezvous with other Americans in order to help a French partisan?


They encounter various other obstacles on the way. At one point, the pastor hero has at his mercy a single German soldier. It’s a critical moment: Will he kill this enemy who has already surrendered and who visibly gives up any hope of surviving the encounter?


The movie doesn’t answer the question right away. We hear a shot and are left to assume that the German soldier has been executed.


Considering the quality of the movie up to this point, I assumed that the German soldier was spared and might show up later in the film, with the tables turned, and in the fashion of an old-school morality play, return the favor by sparing the life of the man who had spared his.


That would’ve been an easy and predictable plot line.


Just as lazy and almost as predictable would be the nihilist alternative, where the German turned the tables on the American and repaid his kindness by shooting him. Plenty of modern Hollywood movies would’ve gone for that so called (stupid) "twist."


The film surprised me by taking it in a different direction. The hero of the story is killed in one of the battles. 


I did not see that coming.


It is one of the other buddies, the cynical one who didn’t want to help the French mademoiselle because he was suspicious it might be a trap, who falls into the hands of… Yes, the same German.


But the interesting twist is that the German does not recognize this American, and the American does not know this German. There’s no personal history between them. The German is not under any special obligation to spare this enemy's life, because this is not the exact men who spared his, but a new foe, a stranger.


Nonetheless, the German can’t help but remember when he himself was in the same situation and was spared by an American. And so he not only does not shoot him but helps the injured American reach shelter.


None of the three men involved ever discover or even have a chance of discovering the peculiar way that one man’s mercy helped eventually save his friend's life from an enemy. And that’s what makes this twist so interesting, and why this little indie movie stayed with me long after I had seen it, and far beyond what it’s modest budget and action sequences normally would have merited.


How do we know, when we are called to do good, if we have ever achieved what we set out to do? How do we know the secret trails and ultimate consequences of the deeds we do in the world? How do we know when we spare someone’s life no it might have repercussions we could never have received later on?


And because we can never know the full consequences of our deeds, and especially our good deeds, which are so much harder to evaluate, how much more important it is to do good for its own sake, expecting nothing in return… And yet not reaping nothing in the end.


It’s rare in modern Hollywood movies these days to watch a film which is about people who are trying to be good. Hollywood has become obsessed with Green Snake characters, who are so busy trying to overthrow the morality of past millennia, that they will actively turn evil to prove themselves free of "oppressive" religion or tradition. And yet, they seem to inadvertently validate the very morality that they are rejecting, because they show horrible people whose betrayals and cowardice and vengeful obsessions create literal hell.


Saints and Soldiers: Airborne Creed, on the other hand, shows how heaven is within reach even in the hell of total war. It may not be obvious, but it is created by the same thing as hell itself. Heaven is created by other people, deed by deed, not with trumpets and fanfare, but quietly and unseen.



If you like Epic Fantasy, you can buy the first book in the epic fantasy The Unfinished Song HERE

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