Tobruk

Tobruk was the story of a regiment of Czechoslovakian soldiers fighting the Nazis in North Africa inspired by Stephen Crane's novel "The Red Badge of Courage".

This film had very good production values: great cinematography, great direction, great set design. But what the film lacked was a good story. The movie was very slow and in the middle of the film it seemed to completely change which character it would focus on. The film starts with new recruits being brought to North Africa. One man, Lieberman, suffers from some initial hazing because he is a Jew. The first half of the film focuses on him, but then about half way, the focus changes to Lieberman's friend without giving much description to who this character is. Like I said, the story was very slow. The soldiers trained, were sent to the front lines, and then for the majority of the movie they were hunkered down in the trenches not saying much to each other. The film was 1 hour and 40 minutes, but it felt like a 2 and a half hour movie. Needless to say, Tobruk was not my favorite film in the festival.

My rating: 2 out of 10