*May Contain Minor Spoilers* Fallen Not Forgotten tells the tale of Sergeant Don Smith, who at 19 volunteered for the Army and in 1944 participated in the Battle Of The Bulge, one of the bloodiest battles of World War Two and the final mass German offensive of the war.
At the center of the film is Sergeant Smith (Cole Carson), an everyman stand-in for everything we think of when we picture the sort of clean-cut All-American boys who volunteered for duty before the draft caught them. As he confronts the horrors of war he longs for Dorrine, the bright-eyed red-headed singer who is (hopefully) waiting for him back home. Beyond his survival, the budding romance he left behind is the key stakes for Smith, who can't help but wonder how the world and his place in it will have changed by the time he returns home, if ever.
Fallen, however, falls distinctly within the genre of a comrade war-film like Saving Private Ryan or the Band of Brothers miniseries. Smith gets the most limelight, but Fallen tries to split the focus otherwise equally among his friends in the 94th Infantry. Two in particular grabbed my interest. Pvt. Benedetto, a down on his luck miscreant who took Army service over jail-time; and Pvt. Heinrich, an enlistee of German heritage who – after confronting anti-German bigotry back in the states – was compelled by patriotic pride to assert undeniably his Americanism by enlist and fight. While Smith pines for his love back in the states, Benedetto struggles under the disciplinarian Army regimen, at one point abandoning his post to meet an opportunistic Frenchman and trade rations for a cask of brandy. Heinrich, meanwhile, has to work and fight twice as hard as any soldier in the 94th to earn the respect of his brothers in arms, who predictably haven't taken any special liking to the man in their midst with the heavy German accent.
The split narrative was one of the highlights; my concern for these two characters and their survival sometimes even overshadowed Smith's everyman story (which, while engaging, has been told many time before). With better editing and a tighter script, they could have made for an amazing movie.
But the split narrative was also, unfortunately, one of Fallen's primary weaknesses.
Like the Battle of the Bulge, Fallen Not Forgotten is, technically, a victory. It was enjoyable as a war film, and the romantic thread interwoven was sufficiently dramatic enough to keep me engaged and rooting for Sergeant Smith. The acting was in a few instances applause-worthy; it wasn't entirely cringe-free, and Tom Hanks and the rest of Private Ryan's cast aren't going to be handing over any of their awards, but for a war film they passed the bar.
But the Battle of the Bulge was, despite being the final nail in the Nazi coffin, hardly the huge success the Allied generals would have wanted. They barely held on. American troops spent a month entirely surrounded by Germans, cut off from their supplies, starving, freezing in the snow, low on ammunition and even lower in spirit.
Fallen Not Forgotten, I'd say, barely held on. As an indie production it took risks your usual blockbuster studio war film wouldn't even contemplate, and while they didn't fail, I can't honestly say they succeeded.
Early disorganization was one of the hardest hurdles to overcome for me as a viewer. Within the first few minutes there's a * double * framing device; the first shot presents Smith narrating as an old man, only to them zoom to 1944, with a battle-hardened young Smith now serving to frame with another, sometimes hokey narration. Then we flash-back to before the war, or at least before our heroes joined, to learn how they all got into the Army.
Then we flash forward again, or I think so anyways. By then I was thoroughly confused. The introductions of each character come one after the other, prolonging the relatively boring first act setup without ever giving me enough time to get to know these characters (I remained uncertain about some of their names well into the film).
Fallen held my interest long enough to get me into middle act, though, which redeems the sloppy introduction and flows relatively seamlessly thereon. The action sequences are what you'd expect from an independent production: don't hold your breath for any huge cinematic shots or dazzling special effects, but it holds its own. Nor does it suffer from any excessive gore, or over-glorification of violence, which should make it more accessibly to a wider audience.
Scoring isn't great, and the narration detracts from immersion, but the cinematography is decent, and Cole Carson's acting improves once the plot gives him more to work with. His struggle with being promoted to Sergeant provides good plot juice, and for a novice actor, he delivers well the emotional turmoil of the sudden responsibility for his men, their survival, and his own leadership, whether it's integrating German-born Heinrich into the company or curtailing Benedetto's recklessness and criminal tendencies. At times, though, I got the impression they'd shoehorned the romantic subplot in to emulate the success of the likes of The Notebook and other war films which featured heavy romantic elements.
My recommendation for Fallen depends entirely on who I'm addressing. The die-hard war-drama fans won't love it, but it scratches the proverbial itch if you're looking for a decent WWII tale. If you're in it for the sweeping battle-shots and hyper-realistic war tale, though, it falls short. Conversely, wider audiences will enjoy the dramatics, and possibly appreciate a war movie that doesn't overly focus on blood and guts.
Tighter editing would have been nice, and the screenplay probably looked better on paper than screen. It certainly isn't anything new for the Battle of the Bulge.
But Fallen Not Forgotten, in the end, is enjoyable enough to warrant getting past the mishandled opener.
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