J. Michael

All Quiet on the Western Front tells a familiar story with a predictable theme and ending -- even if one hasn't read the book. Like most war stories, the emphasis is on the futility of war; shocking the senses with excellent production and special effects on a scale not often seen in post-CGI cheating, to bring a very realistic, graphic horror front and center of what men of war face when flesh intersects with point blank machine guns, bayonets, and bombs; rivaling, but not surpassing the precedent of such skillful reproduction of mass death established by Saving Private Ryan. But this film tries to interweave a more personal, individual story of the soldier's emotional destruction through quaint, but less compelling interactions with comrades out of the war theater, which falls short in expanding beyond the lessons of death of friends. While its effort knocks on the door of the desired empathy it seeks to solicit, the script and environments chosen fail to bring us deeper into our protagonist's journey; with the ultimate conclusion of his fate failing to teach us as much about the waste, as we already knew early in the film. The well chosen and laid out cinematography setups are jaded by select moments of dark, metallic music bites that do nothing to forewarn the novelty of horror they must intend to predict; but rather, distract from the visual story one is catching up with from the prior scenes leading up to these moments. I'd give it a FOUR out of FIVE, merely because the script and post production both needed refining of an otherwise very excellent effort, that could have been better executed.