Rent D-Day Assassins (2019)

Told in Flashbacks - D-Day Assassins review by KW

Interesting film, nothing special about it, covers an area of WW2 that has been well covered before in films, but is still watchable!

Avoid! - D-Day Assassins review by GT

Appalling dialogue, 2-dimensional characters, hackneyed flashback set-ups, wooden acting, poor cinematography (apart from original war footage)...

Minor spoilers follow ... - D-Day Assassins review by NP

Prolific director Andrew Jones has made a name for himself delivering minimally-budgeted projects for over ten years now, and with some success. Usually focusing on horror themes, he eschews spectacular scenarios in favour of telling more intimate character-based tales with a small collection of actors (although here, the cast list is a lot longer than is usual). With these war-based projects, he often chooses to tell stories of American soldiers, using English actors and locations. A recent example of this is 2018's 'Alcatraz' (which employs some of the actors featured here). So although his budget doesn't allow for big action adventures, Jones's ambitions are fairly broad. Whether the results mark this as a good thing or not is up to the individual - for me, it is a mixed bag.

With horror stories, it is easier to overlook slowly-delivered, perfunctory dialogue; this approach, together with occasionally challenging sound-design, can actually enhance the dream-like quality of what you are watching - Jones's series of 'Robert the Doll' films often work because of this. For a reality-based story such as 'D-Day Assassins', such restrictions are more glaring.

With his customary loose approximation of accuracy, 'The Filthy Thirteen' are shown in flashback, as gruff old veteran and survivor Hawkeye (Ryan Michaels) - so gruff in fact, he is sometimes difficult to understand - recounts to a directionless young man (Aaron Jeffcoate) stories of his war-torn youth. This makes up the bulk of the 77 minutes running time. All of this is handsomely filmed, making good use of the location, if rarely evoking the 'feel' of those days (everything is a little too bright for that). Viewers who are knowledgeable about weaponry and clothes used at the time might get a little irritated. For me, such things are not really a huge problem, as long as the story is arresting, which it is for the most part. Even then, although 'D-Day Assassins' is character-based, we never learn much about any of them, other than the struggles they are facing at the given time. My score for this is 6 out of 10.

(For anyone worried about the lack of regular Lee Bane - he's here, but you have to wait to see him, as the vicar and I believe the unseen lawyer right at the end.)