This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Great Crusade
Plot Overview
A company of Allied paratroopers jumps
into occupied France. Their target is to destroy a radio jamming tower
on top of a church, which would interfere with air support of
a pending invasion, jeopardizing 100,000 Allied soldiers. Only four
make it to the rally point: black Private Ed Boyce (Jovan Adepo),
Corporal Ford (Wyatt Russell), talkative Tibbet (John Magaro), and
photographer Chase (Iain De Caestecker.) They stumble upon a
deformed animal carcass resembling a jackal with hooves. They run
into villager Mlle. Chloe Laurent (Mathilde Ollivier) who caches
them in her home with her frère Paul (8) and her “sick” aunt.
Black Boyce is taunted by his comrades in arms for having released a mouse into a field instead of killing it as ordered. It came back. It was likely a shrew instead of a mouse, the former having a wider territory and a keen homing sense. Shrews are by nature aggressive; in order to support their high rate of metabolism they eat anything they find and are capable of chewing up: roots, nuts, grubs, insects, spiders, centipedes, small mice. When Boyce reconnoiters the tower control room in the church, he finds Nazi thousand-year-soldiers in the making. They are a different animal than what they're used to fighting.
Ideology
In the opening scene aboard a C–47 transport plane on its way to the drop, Boyce fumbles and drops some religious jewelry on the deck. When he asks for his chain back, his buddies razz him about his “good luck charm,” saying he'll need more than that where he's going. Catholics make an easy target for superstitious reliance on medallions, but some Protestants get it too, for their zealous, exclusive reliance on the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. For comparison purposes we'll look at these King-James-only adherents, as well.
(Isaiah 66:2) “For all those things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been, saith the LORD: but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word.” There's four things here God likes, and we'll take them one at a time for both cases. God likes to be acknowledged as creator of everything. The KJV being around since 1611—for a lot longer if one counts the Bibles it was derived from—is easily seen to be the word of the eternal God. Other translations being johnny-come-latelies not so much, especially since their copyrights make them the intellectual property of man. In our movie Boyce came from Ohio, being a country boy. He knew the difference between a harmless “mouse” and a vicious dog. He could navigate in the woods at night. And his home was enough in the country that he had his own lawn to mow in the morning. Being close to nature helps one to see God in his surroundings.
“Him that is poor” applies well to those who carry the KJV. Supply and demand. So many copies have been printed that they're available free or on the cheap. Private Boyce comes from slave roots: Haiti through Louisiana and now Ohio country. Furthermore, he's devoted to playing cards the way some American men are to baseball. If his first jump into a hot zone is any indication, he habitually loses. First there is the shuffling the deck as the men pile out of the plane. Then it's cut like Boyce cutting himself free from his lines. And finally, he loses his shirt like he lost his helmet during his landing. Okay, maybe I'm reading something into war action here, but the way Boyce explains it, “Three months ago, I was cutting grass on my front yard. The mailman shows up with a letter from the army. Now I'm here.” If he'd won the card game, he'd have been paying some kid to cut the grass.
“And of a contrite spirit.” Contrite means penitent, sorry for one's sins. The word itself derives from a Greek word meaning 'to rub', likely it's from the itchy sackcloth penitents wore in Bible days. Nowadays, the KJV dialect rubs some people the wrong way, but to us penitents who use this version, it's a reminder there's something better than our sorry lives. Boyce was contrite enough to try to prevent even the supposed good guys from getting the Nazi super technology, knowing it would ultimately be used for evil.
“And trembleth at
my word.” Boyce who carries a religious medallion on his person
is put off by the trashed religious statuary outside the village
church. Instead of, say, the stations of the cross depicted inside
the church, he sees Nazi evil experiments. He also finds Private Dawson
(Jacob Anderson) nailed with a big ole spike to one of the Nazi
contraptions, like Christ to the cross, and he has to lift it off
him. It seems to be a parody of, (Matt. 27:32) “And as they came
out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name: him they compelled
to bear his cross.” Cyrene was where black people lived, compare
(Acts 13:1) “Now there were
in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers; as
… Simeon that was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene.”
Niger is Latin
for black. As a Protestant big on the Bible, I lament that its English
derivative 'nigger' is all but banned from polite conversation,
though it be found sanctified in my Bible, and many other catchy biblical
phrases are going out of style. Boyce was flummoxed when it came time
to report on the tower security; all he could blubber about was the
Nazi atrocities he saw. Here it's trembling for religious statuary
and words being displaced.
Production Values
“” (2018) was directed by Julius Avery. Its screenplay was written by Billy Ray and Mark L. Smith. It stars Jovan Adepo, Wyatt Russell, and Mathilde Ollivier. Adepo gave a standout performance. The rest were adequate to a wartime theater. Casting a black lead into an integrated fighting unit in an historical period of segregation should be tolerated as creative license when the station of the cross he reflected is about an earlier historical black man.
MPAA rated it R for strong bloody violence, disturbing images, language, and brief sexual content. The opening scene was awesome. The sets get trashed when the monster soldiers appear. I have no idea how they managed the makeup effects, they look so real. The costumes were period. The fighting action was sorta camp.
Review Conclusion w/ Christian Recommendation
Although it has its share of battlefield realism, “Overlord” should not be regarded as serious history. It's more like a fun romp against some seriously wicked Nazi creations, and it features an all-American hero who quits himself well though he be on the wrong side of the color line for the genre. It should work for a wide audience.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Edge of your seat action-packed fun. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Absolutely amazing special effects. Video Occasion: Good for Groups. Suspense: Don't watch this movie alone. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.
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