Battleground - Heroes in the Firestorm - DVD

Content: The days when Sergeant Arthur Wilkins (Johan Earl) was just an ordinary man are long gone. The war has killed Arthur - now there is only Sgt. Wilkins, who has lost all his feelings for self-protection to survive the horror at the front. In 1916, as German troops move ever closer to British positions in France, Wilkins is ordered to lead a frontal assault against the enemy. Wilkins knows that this is a downright suicide mission, as they stand no chance whatsoever against German defensive fire. Nevertheless, he follows his commander's orders and launches an attack that quickly degenerates into hopeless slaughter. Most of his men die in the hail of bullets. The few survivors are caught between the lines. Wilkins knows he has little time to get his men to safety before the Allies put the entire area under artillery fire. But the seemingly omnipresent enemy, darkness, and rough terrain make this an almost impossible mission...

About 1 million euros was available to Johan Earl and Adrian Powers to tell their World War I story in a field in New South Wales, Australia. The directors manage very well to convey the anxiety in the trenches and the despair that spreads among the soldiers trapped in no-man's land, especially in view of the very low budget. The fact that the film was shot in only 22 days under not always easy circumstances doesn't detract from the final result.

Battleground tells a really exciting story in itself. However, the fact that the film still only turned out to be good average in the end is due to two circumstances in particular. The first one is that the makers don't manage to find any new sides to the genre of the war movie. Dramaturgically, the whole thing follows a familiar pattern, as well as the already not very deep drawing of the characters. This wouldn't be a big deal in itself, because the desperate fight for survival of Wilkins and his men is exciting enough to hide this weakness. But that's where the production's second glitch comes in.

Every so often, the action on the battlefield is interrupted by scenes with Arthur's great love Gracie (Denai Gracie). And they're just not very interesting, unfortunately. The emotional impact that is supposed to happen here just doesn't want to be achieved, not least because of the rather wooden acting of the actress. This leads to the fact that the viewer is constantly pulled out of the actual story and that the tension, which tries to build up again and again, is constantly destroyed by this. And as a result, the weaknesses that would have otherwise been covered up by the suspense become much more noticeable and also disturbing.

Battleground is not a bad film, but the claustrophobic suspense potential that the war film certainly has is unfortunately only marginally exploited. More than good average is unfortunately never, what but with deductions for interested viewers still enough to a worth seeing.

Picture + Sound: Since the action takes place in many moments in the gloom on the mud-covered battlefield, the color scheme plays here rather a subordinate role. Overall, the image sharpness is okay, but has to suffer from the lack of brightness again and again, even in the detail representation. The sound, on the other hand, can convince with a very atmospheric implementation, in which the surround channels are used in such a way that you as a viewer have the feeling in the best moments to actually be in the middle of the action. Over long stretches, however, the quieter scenes determined by dialogues determine the action, whereby then also primarily the front channels are used.

Extras: In addition to the trailer, the DVD still has an interesting Making of (approx. 33 min.) to offer, which among other things goes into the difficulties of finding a suitable filming location, which one was also allowed to devastate a war scene accordingly. That's not a lot of extra material overall, but it's compelling in terms of content. Good!

Conclusion:Battleground is an Australian war film that has some very successful aspects to offer, but overall fails to wrest new, independent sides from the genre. The action on the battlefield is thrilling and hauntingly staged, the subplot on the other hand keeps unnecessarily slowing down the tension and never achieves the emotional impact that was obviously intended by the filmmakers. Not a bad film, but unfortunately not more than good average either. The DVD convinces with a decent technical realization and a making of worth seeing

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp