Movie Review: 'Battle of the Bulge'

Pros: None

Cons: Awful screenplay, historical inaccuracies abound, laughable performances, tepid directing.

On December 16, 1944, elements of three German armies -- 14 infantry and five panzer divisions in all -- attacked part of the American First Army along an 80-mile front along Germany's border with Belgium and Luxembourg. The sudden and unexpected counteroffensive hit the Americans in an area the Allies thought would be a nice, quiet sector for combat-weary divisions to rest and refit while green divisions fresh from the States could be acclimated to life on the line: the dark and deep forests of the Ardennes.

Planned and ordered by Adolf Hitler himself, this massive onslaught was launched with one objective in mind: penetrate the American lines, pass through the "impassable" Ardennes Forest, cross the Meuse River, and capture the vital port of Antwerp. At the very least, the Allied supply situation would deteriorate enough to slow the Anglo-American advance to the Reich's industrial heartland by a matter of months and buy time for Hitler and his tottering empire. At the very best, a German victory would split the Grand Alliance in three, trap the Anglo-Canadian 21st Army Group on the northern sector of the front, and the Fuhrer could attempt to convince the Soviets that further fighting was useless now that the Western Allies had been defeated at the Reich's very doorstep.


For a few snowy, foggy, and bitterly cold days, things seemed to be going Hitler's way. Caught off-guard by the sheer size of the counteroffensive, hampered by bad weather which prevented Allied air power to provide ground support to the tankers and infantrymen along the front, confused and misdirected by a small number of English-speaking German commandos wearing American uniforms, and, at some points along the 80-mile "Ghost Front," isolated, outnumbered, and forced to surrender, GIs fought a seemingly losing battle against hundreds of thousands of German soldiers.

But even when some units panicked or were overrun, many American soldiers -- sometimes in dribs and drabs -- stood fast and delayed the enemy, giving Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Allied Supreme Commander, and his generals valuable time to plan a riposte and turn what seemed to be a disaster into a strategic opportunity. And sure enough, after a month's of heavy fighting in the awful cold of a European winter, the German counteroffensive was slowed, halted, and gradually pushed back to where it had started.

Of the various "all-star cast" recreations of famous World War II battles that were made after The Longest Day's successful run at the box office, Ken Annakin's Battle of the Bulge ranks among the worst of the genre, not only because the story of the Ardennes Counteroffensive is too complex to be encapsulated into a theatrical feature film, but because the script is lousy, the acting is uninspired, and it's woefully inaccurate. (How inaccurate is it? Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had been the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force and was therefore in a position to know what he was talking about, gave it a big thumbs down.)

Although this episodic film depicts the month-long campaign in Belgium and Luxembourg in short vignettes featuring such actors as Telly Savalas (Sgt. Guffy, a tanker who delves in the black market), Charles Bronson (as an American officer captured by the Germans), and Hawaii Five-O costar James MacArthur (as a U.S. infantry platoon leader), Annakin's film is essentially a war of wits between Army intelligence officer Lt. Col. Daniel Kiley (Henry Fonda) and Panzer commander Col. Martin Hessler (Robert Shaw), the leader of the German spearhead whose mission it is to drive to the River Meuse in 60 hours.

Although the film begins with a disclaimer stating that although events and characters had been changed to cram as much of the Battle of the Bulge into the movie, Annakin's version of the U.S. Army's biggest battle is a terrible mish-mash of war movie cliches and fanciful distortions of historical events.

Unlike Jack Smight's equally dire Midway, all of the characters in Battle of the Bulge are fictitious, even though Kiley is based on Col. "Monk" Dickson, the U.S. First Army's chief intelligence officer and Shaw's Hessler is loosely drawn from SS Lt. Col. Jochem Peiper, whose troops perpetrated the infamous "Malmedy Massacre" (which is one of the episodes depicted in the movie).

World War II buffs with nothing better to do will have a field day picking apart Battle of the Bulge, which exaggerates the success of Operation Greif (the use of English-speaking German soldiers in captured American uniforms) and the use of Tiger tanks by the panzer armies. Whereas in real life the Germans relied mainly on the Panzer IV and V ("Panther") models and only had a handful of Panzer VI Tigers, the movie would have the viewer believe that every Nazi tank was a Tiger. In almost every encounter between American and German armor, the "Tigers" outgun and outfight the puny U.S. tanks until they are deprived of fuel. (Even more laughable: because the film was shot in Spain and Spanish troops and equipment stood in for both sides, the "Tigers" are U.S.-made M-48 Patton tanks painted gray and decorated with German-style numbers. Even A Bridge Too Far, which didn't have any real Tigers either, made a better effort to achieve a modicum of authenticity.)

Also vexing is a subplot that tries to plant the Good German vs. Bad German concept into the viewer's mind. In this case, there is a progressive parting of the minds between Wehrmacht Col. Hessler and Corporal Conrad, his orderly (Hans Christian Blech), an older and therefore more introspective fellow than the fanatical panzer leader. Conrad's story arc has him going from loyal but war-weary batman to a disillusioned and hopeless man who simply wants the war to end before his sons are drafted and sent to fight for a lost cause.

Although Battle of the Bulge delves into such incidents as the siege of Bastogne -- where the encircled Americans replied to a German surrender demand with the word "Nuts!" -- and the aforementioned Malmedy massacre, its depictions of armored and infantry battles are absurdly inaccurate. The German advance wasn't as relentless or as overwhelming everywhere as the screenplays writers would have one believe, nor did American soldiers retreat willy-nilly at every point along the 80-mile front. The film even gets terrain and weather all wrong; in one climactic tank battle, the American tanks speed down hills and valleys devoid of snow. In reality, the Battle of the Bulge was made more difficult for both sides by one of the coldest winters in European history.

If you want to see a good film about the Ardennes Counteroffensive, you can always watch 1949's Battleground, which focuses on a small group of paratroopers in the vicinity of Bastogne, or 1990's A Midnight Clear. But do yourself a favor and bypass Battle of the Bulge. 

Blu-ray Specifications

Video

Codec: VC-1 (16.93 Mbps)

Resolution: 1080p

Aspect ratio: 2.75:1

Original aspect ratio: 2.75:1

Audio

English: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)

French: Dolby Digital Mono

Subtitles

English, English SDH, French, Spanish

Discs

Blu-ray Disc

Single disc (1 BD-50)

Playback

Region free