Allies

2014

Action / Drama / War

2
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 40% · 1 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 40% · 50 ratings
IMDb Rating 5.1/10 10 1075 1.1K

Director

Dominic Burns Photo
Dominic Burns

Top cast

Julian Ovenden Photo
Julian Ovenden as Captain Gabriel Jackson
Werner Daehn Photo
Werner Daehn as Captain Dekker
Craig Smith Photo
Craig Smith as US 82nd Airborne Soldier
David Sterne Photo
David Sterne as Pierre
720p.WEB 1080p.WEB
859.23 MB
1280*534
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
24 fps
1 hr 33 min
Seeds 1
1.72 GB
1920*800
English 5.1
NR
Subtitles us  
24 fps
1 hr 33 min
Seeds 6

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by azanti0029 5 / 10

A Commendable low budget British independent guys on a mission war flick

I will prefix this review by stating that I have no personal connection to the film at all. I am history buff and like to support British indy films, so that is why I bought it. About every three months or so as if by weird synchronicity a World War 2 movie on DVD you have never heard of will magically appear on the shelves of your local Tescoe's or Sainsbury's - Often their starring people you have also never heard of or occasionally one vaguely familiar name from television somewhere. Sometimes their films from Russia, Norway, Poland Or Denmark and even the biggest budget of those can often disappoint (See my review for Stalingrad) While others like Citeron and Flame are superb pieces of work - Other times their extremely low budget and appear to have been made at the behest of all the worst ideas possible (See Rhineland) Others are well crafted little films that do their best with extremely limited resources - The best of these so far has been the Saints and Soldiers series (I have the third one awaiting my viewing pleasure next door) Frequently these films have rather glossy artwork covers, invariably with a picture of a tank that almost never appears in the actual movie and a visual display that suggests far more action and adventure than the film goes on to deliver. Allies does feature an actual tank, but its not on the cover of the DVD - As luck would have it the makers of Allies have realised that good casting and decent dialogue rather than a tank on the cover, for a better film do make! Allies is an earnest attempt at creating a boy's own War Movie old school style and while they don't quite have the budget to pull it off entirely they certain have a dam good try.Its the summer of 1944, The Normandy Campaign is over and the Allies are steaming into France and heading to the Dutch, Belgian and German borders. The Germans are preparing their defences and getting ready to fall behind The West Wall, so our heroes led by Captain Gabriel Jackson (Julian Ovendon from Downton Abbey) are to parachute in and attack a small convoy led by an SS commander who is touring the local defences and has maps of their dispositions. But the enemy seems to know their coming - could their be a traitor in their midst?Such is the rather simple set up of ALLIES - Okay so its not a plot on par with 'Where Eagles Dare' though there were moments when radio calls were being made which led myself and my friends to call out 'Broadsword calling Danny Boy! The traitor in the midst seems rather obvious from the word go due to the over acting of the gentleman concerned, but on the whole this is a very made movie. Good Production Design and Photography stand out here and the acting from some of the members of the squad is especially good - special mentions to Matt Willis, Chris Reily, Leon Vickers and Edmund Kingsley all of whom make their mark, the latter almost with no dialogue at all. The film isn't perfect by any means - While care is taken in the earlier scenes to establish these characters it seems a shame that several of them die 45 minutes into the movie (Two of the best actors among them) and the Germans continually turning up gets repetitive after a while offering little in the way of surprises. A toe amputation scene felt added for gory effect but on the whole this is a well made, well intentioned film with German actor for hire Eric Redman commanding the Wehrmacht ranks along with every re- inactor they could get giving it a bigger than its actual budget feel. Three of us watched it last night and we can be quite critical, especially of war movies, but we all enjoyed it and while the plot and aspects of the story could have been stronger and the summary at the end of the film really only adds a historical context which is tenuous at best to the story that preceded it, this is well worth seeing and something of which all who were involved in it can be proud of.
Reviewed by rlobb 6 / 10

Action-packed but somewhat ludicrous

"Allies" is an exciting, action-packed war movie that can be very enjoyable if you can get over the fact that it is rather ludicrous and predictable. If every Allied soldier killed that many Germans, the war would have been over in six months. And one could only wish that Allied tanks would have shown up in such a timely manner. It rather reminded me of WWII shows that used to appear on American TV, except that some of them (especially "Combat!") were superior, dramatically speaking. But who doesn't like a slam-bang story of commando action, combat, betrayal, and even a little romance? Not a great war movie by any means, but not a bad film if you are willing to suspend a rather large portion of disbelief.
Reviewed by jimmymise 5 / 10

This is what you need to know.

The people that say this movie is "sensational" are obviously connected with it somehow. Or they should have their IMDb review privileges suspended. That being said, the movie isn't all that bad, especially for those of us that crave any new World War II movies we can get our hands on. Most of the problems are technical. It looks like much of the film went straight from the video camera to the final cut without any processing in between. It needed a much better cinematographer.Many of the special effects were a little rough including some mortar hits or mines or something that looked like an air cannon or fire extinguisher shooting up out of the ground.The other comments about the movie needing a better military adviser are spot on. Some of the tactics in the movie are not seen in any other film. Like keeping your men grouped really tightly as you move through the woods and fields. Or standing in a long "civil war-esque" line while you fire your weapons.But I did not regret watching this movie and recommended it to my father who is also a WWII movie buff. You could do far worse.
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