Brothers in War
With the war working its way towards an end German captain, Mueller (Tino Struckmann) is trying to hold the line on the Polish border whilst the Russians lead by Col. Petrov (Michael Berryman) have plans for Europe which they would rather their British counterparts, including British Major Andrew Pearman (Hugh Daly), didn't know about. Mueller ends up caught whilst Pearman ends up arrested in order to stop him getting details of their plans back to Britain and they both find themselves lumped together. Whilst enemies they must work together in order to break out and make it to allied lines with a little help from Anna (Hayley Carr) a nurse who joins them.
As a movie reviewer I often read what others thought of a movie once I have written my review and the diversity of opinion makes it very interesting especially when it comes to modern low budget war movies as these get an inordinate amount of scorn poured on them. Now I am not going to say I am right and those others are wrong because that would be silly but I wonder whether those who ridicule one of these war movies for being weak haven't watched many other low budget modern war movies. I say this because "Brother's War" whilst not a good movie is in fact better than a lot of modern low budget war movies and has an interesting storyline with some nice ideas.
But before I get to them let me state the obvious; "Brother's War" is a low budget war movie where the camera detail may not be sharp, the dialogue may not be fine tuned to perfection and the editing is frankly often dodgy. It may also not have the best actors with the only one close to being recognizable being Michael Berryman whose unique features make him recognizable from some Hollywood movies. And the action is ordinary with the CGI post edits only adding to that feeling of being made on limited funds with limited technology.
But the interesting thing about "Brother's War" is the simple idea of having a German and a British soldier having to work together against the Russians. Don't get me wrong as it is not the most original idea but the antagonism is entertaining and when during the second half it has them as observers to the destruction that the fighting has caused it does find some depth that many modern war movies fail to find.
What this all boils down to is that "Brother's War" won't leave a lasting impression on you and you probably will find it a struggle if you expect every movie to be up to Hollywood standards. But as low budget modern war movies go it has some surprising plus points which make it bearable.
