FILM REVIEW OF ''D-DAY SURVIVOR" (2017)

Amateurish writing, directing, and editing undermine director Ian Vernon’s “D-Day Survivor” (** OUT OF ****), an interesting, low-budget World War II indie epic about a ‘lost patrol’ during the historic Normandy Invasion.  A staple of war movies is the saga about soldiers separated from their command with no idea where they are in the general scheme of things.  Clocking in at a sluggish 95-minutes, “D-Day Survivor” generates occasional bursts of violence, but the film loiters all the way to its explosive finale.  The first third introduces the offbeat characters, with a minor skirmish involving attempted homosexual rape.  Eventually, the last third drums up some traditional combat, with an assault on a German pillbox.  Independent filmmakers deserve more leeway because they have nowhere near the resources of their major studio counterparts.  Compensating for his tight-budget, Vernon breaks new ground in “D-Day Survivor” with the depiction of deviant sexuality in the ranks.  Meantime, cinematographer Ivan D. Rennov, who has worked with Vernon on three earlier films, exploits the lush color and idyllic rural setting to make everything appear scenic.  Despite its picture-postcard splendor, “D-Day Survivor” suffers from a hopeless lack of momentum, until an inevitable rendezvous with the French Resistance.  Predictably, the underground allows filmmakers to send a woman into combat and add a trifling romantic subplot. Vernon’s lack of creative polish undercuts his best intentions, but his thematic concerns redeem his derivative narrative.

Mind you, a title with “D-Day” in it conjures up images of Darryl F. Zanuck’s “The Longest Day” (1962), Robert Parrish’s “Up from the Beach (1965), Samuel Fuller’s “The Big Red One” (1980), and Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” (1998). Sadly, we see only the “Survivor” and nothing of “D-Day.”  You won’t see any big ships and landing craft with soldiers scrambling across barb-wired beaches while machine guns stitch the sand.  Once you get over missing the historic, June 1944, Allied beachhead landings, you can understand the different direction that Vernon pursues because he lacked the budget to recreate the landings.  Instead, he presents an obnoxious, homosexual, British soldier who holds his unwilling prey at gun point and threatens to rape him.  Nothing like “Deliverance” occurs, but the gay soldier’s aggression makes homosexuals look depraved. You won’t find material like this in most traditional World War II movies, apart from “The Imitation Game” (2014) with Benedict Cumberbatch.  Classic novelist James Jones depicted instances of this in his World War II book trilogy that contained “From Here to Eternity” and “The Thin Red Line.”  Vernon scores a first with this unsavory subject matter which would have been objectionable in traditional World War II movies.  Happily, Vernon’s use of the initiation theme, plunging innocents into combat for their first baptism of blood on the battlefield, bolsters “D-Day Survivor.”  These characters and their actions stand out in “D-Day Survivor,” especially a reflective U.S. Army private. The quartet of young men who constitute the collective protagonist here face a gauntlet that shapes their respective fates.  Some characters can be annoying, particularly a vulnerable soldier who repeats virtually every word uttered by the other characters. A hopeless cretin who comes through at the least expected moments, he provides comic relief that is rarely humorous. 

British Army Paratrooper Private Johnny Barrows (newcomer Paul Harrison) finds himself alone in a field somewhere in France.  He bailed out over France with his battalion of paratroopers, but they missed their drop zone (like so many did on D-Day), and the Germans wiped out his comrades, leaving him the sole survivor.  Barrows crosses paths briefly with an affable German soldier, and they swap candy.  Later, our hero differentiates Germans from Nazis during a conversation with an arrogant Gestapo officer, Sturmbannfuhrer Dishelm (Richard Dobson of “Brood Parasite”), that they have captured.  Anyway, as they go their separate ways, the German soldier dies from a bullet in the back.  A British soldier fired on the German after Barrows allowed him to leave. Reluctantly, Barrows joins up with two lost British soldiers, Private Murphy (television actor James Boyland), his moronic, simple-minded friend, Private Fily (Guy Wills of “Looking for Eric”), and a taciturn American paratrooper, Private George (Adam Woodward of “The Black Prince”), who is suffering from shell shock.  This quartet trudge through rural France, with Murphy behaving like a bully.  Eventually, they come upon a U.S. Army jeep, with a dead driver and a defunct American general.  Since both jeep passengers are dead, Barrows suggests that they appropriate the vehicle.  They cruise down a road with Barrows behind the wheel.  Little do they know a German sign warning them about land mines on the road has been knocked down.  They hit a land mine, but they survive the explosion.

Eventually, our heroes ambush three Germans in a staff car and capture a Gestapo officer.  Since he is carrying a satchel of papers, they decide to bring him back alive.  Later, they encounter the French Resistance, and Margaret (Sophie Skelton of “Another Mother’s Son”) helps Barrows and his men launch an attack on a German outpost with a Tiger tank parked nearby.  Tactlessly, the Tiger tank is never utilized.  Presumably, not only Vernon but also our heroes are searching for bigger game.  They find it after they confront a German pillbox that has kept American troops pinned down.  The problem with Vernon’s pillbox is that it isn’t as sturdy as the pillbox that is devastated in an infinitely better World War II movie, Don Siegel’s “The Hell with Heroes” (1962), where exhausted G.I.s sought to stay alive under worse circumstances.  The destructive toll that the pillbox exacts in “The Hell with Heroes’ is extreme.  Comparatively, the “D-Day Survivor” pillbox is a picnic.  Hampered by his shoe-string budget, Vernon focuses on how these young, inexperienced soldiers cooperate to accomplish their objectives.  Only after they succeed as a team are they prepared to destroy the pillbox.  Nevertheless, “D-Day Survivor” qualifies as a routine World War movie.