About 15 years ago, while trying to make a dent in my so-called career as a screenwriter, I came up with the idea of a group of commandos, during WW2, who were sent on a mission to Nazi occupied France to locate and destroy a weapons factory sat just outside of a small French Village.
The commandos meet up with a female
Now in 2018, under the producing powers of JJ Abrams and director Julius Avery, my vision for a WW2 Horror/Action/ Survival film almost makes it to the screen. Now, i'm not here to say that Overlord stole my idea, no sireee, I've never shown my incomplete script to anyone, and lets face it, it's a pretty over-used plot, no, what I'm saying is that Both Abrams and Avery, along with writers Billy Ray and Mark L.Smith have done justice to an idea I never could. Overlord is a bad ass B-Movie, the likes we only ever see in Low-budget British Indie movies who's director knows a guy who's friends with another guy that does WW2 re-enactments on his weekends. Overlord has legit power behind and a clear vision of what it wants to look like, not what it want's to be because, tonally, Overlord is a mixed bag. It seems to be going for that From Dusk Till Dawn genre switch up, but where as FDTD does this genre switch towards the mid point of the film, Overlord takes it's sweet time getting there, when it does, it's balls to the wall action, practical FX and explosions.
Starting off like an episode of HBO's utterly brilliant, if not THE best TV show ever made, Band Of Brothers (2001) by way of Spike Lee's sadly underrated Miracle At St Anna (2008) with just a little dab of Inglourious Basterds (2009) thrown in for the exploitation fans out there. It's a very odd switch in tone because it seems more interested in telling a war story as apposed to a horror story. The first hour or so is very much a war drama, culling ideas from Band Of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan and other better Men-On--A-Mission WW2 movies and focuses mainly on the drama aspect instead of the horror element of what is essentially a nazi-sploitation movie. This drama focus is what seems to be putting a lot of people off the film, fully expecting a CastleWolfenstein or Call Of Duty Zombies film, but what they got was a well written, thought-out and well shot, near 2hr WW2 Action Horror. Average Cinemagoers seem to only want explosions and gun-fights and while there are quite a few explosions and expertly shot shoot-outs, the film takes its time to develop the characters, character development seems to be something most casual cinemagoers don't seem to care about. "I spent $20 for this and all I got was 40 minutes and zombies and 60 minutes of drama", these people seemed to be watching a completely different film to me because I thought the pacing was on point.
Yes there are some historical inaccuracies such as integrated military units consisting of Black soldiers and white soldiers, led by a black sergeant, yeah this was completely incorrect as the ending of segregated military units was put into action until 1948 and even then it wasn't enforced until 1963. Ive seen a lot of negative reviews complaining about how this was to appease the PC brigade, that's not how I see it, I see this as being set in alternate WW2 where intergrated units were a reality and a Nazi supersoldier/zombie nazi was a possible thing. It's fiction, using the war as a backdrop for a horror film, it's not supposed to be taken seriously.
There's some stand-out performances too, with Javon Adepo (Fences) taking the lead in this Action/Horror as Boyce (You know Marlene don'tcha?) The Young recruit thrust into this insane mission only 3 months after being drafted. Even though Boyce is as green as they come, he quickly adapts to the situation. It's a good performance and it'll be interesting to see where he goes from here. Wyatt Russell, the son of the legendary Kurt Russell aka Krussell, is good as the hardened Lieutenant Ford who ends up becoming leader of the surviving paratroopers and his main goal is the mission, destroy a radio tower, the mutant, undead zombie super-soldiers are a secondary mission. While he does look at times, very much like his father, it's good to see him not trying to be his father, he could have easily played Ford like Snake Pliskin but he didn't and this shows an actor trying to make a name for himself without having to imitate his father. Pilou Asbaek (Ghost In The Shell/Game Of Thrones) is dialled up to 11 as Wafner, the Nazi commander in charge of the radio tower and the experiments. He reminds me of Michael Shannon but 10 times as crazy and it's a pitch perfect performance, coming across like Hans Lander and The Joker with the menace of Shannon and the kookieness of Nic Cage.
OVERLORD is a fun b-movie with an A-movie budget and alot of love for the genre and for old school filmmaking, it's a roller coaster ride of gore, explosions and exploitation while at the same time, a WW2 drama about the D-Day landings. I enjoyed the hell out of it and feel, within time, Overlord will be looked back on as a cult movie, this is a film that'll find its audience at home.
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