Rent The Last Rifleman (2023)

A sister film to THE GREAT ESCAPER based on the same true story, parachuted into an Irish setting - The Last Rifleman review by PV

Watchable but ever-so safe, predictable and thus annoying D-Day veteran tale.

NB: The Last Rifleman is loosely based on the true story of British D-Day veteran Bernard Jordan, who left his care home in England to travel to France. Another film based on Jordan's story, The Great Escaper, starring Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson, was released a few weeks earlier.

So you wait ages for a film about an old boy returning to the Normandy beaches and then two come along at once eh?

The added twee oirish-ness annoyed me often in this, epecially as this is Northern Ireland AKA British and all the British Isles too, even though the teen thugs on the streets are shown to try and balance the tweeness.

Also annoying was the utterly gratuitous shoe-horning of a black US GI meeting the main character in France - who has just got a medal for being the first African-American on the beaches on 6 June 1944 (Omahaa and Utah were the US beaches; Brits and Canadians were on Gold, Juno and Sword). Sadly, THE GREAT ESCAPER was also obsessed with tickbox diversity and parachuting people of colour into the cast and background, which is not realistic at all (ever been to Normandy? Well I have! Brixton or Hounslow it ain't).

In WWII the US army was segregated so the black (or 'N-gro) units as called then, (have to use a dash so snowflakes do not have a meltdown and report the review) were separate and DID NOT take part in front line fighting at all; they had support auxiliary roles, loads of African Americans in the medical core or catering or logistics/transport/supplies or here putting up barrage balloons. What worries me is now kids are taught at school that the D-Day beaches were a multiculti operation, with lots of black and brown faces. THAT IS JUST NOT TRUE. Saving Private Ryan got it right. I dread to think of a woke remake, maybe 40% black/Asian and 50% female, plus wheelchairs of course - it could almost be the BBC newsroom!). ALL added to boost the US PR no doubt and get that funding?

There is maybe room for a separate movie about that black barrage balloon unit BUT there already have been many movies about black-only units in WWII in the segregated US army/. Plenty of Jewish troops fought and died and also what Americans call Hispanics, which is what we Europeans call 'white'.

Interesting, the German soldiers defending the beaches on D-Day and killing Americans and Brits were much more diverse and ethnic, as many were central Asians or from parts of the USSR the Nazis invaded - such as Ukraine or further easy. D-Day at Normandy was a surprise attack (watch OPERATION MINCEMEAT or the better THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS to see how the Allies fooled the Germans into thinking the landings would be to the south). SO the ethnic German troops were elsewhere and the beaches of Normandy were defended by many central Asian troops with high cheekbones who looked like Yul Brynner (A Russian who wonderfully played the King of Siam though these days the woke gestapo would make that VERBOTEN in their pc fascism eh?). US GIs were often puzzled when they took prisoners who they said looked 'Chinese'.

As for UK troops. In 1939 there were ONLY 6000 black people in the UK (and some very well off upper class Asians - incl 2 Asian MPs in the 1920s and many at top public schools). Of a population of 44 million. GI mixed race babies made that 8000 at the end of the war. So SHOW THAT not a diversity-worshipping fantasy of what YOU the woke taliban want the past and history to be. Very Hitler or Staling, rewriting the past how you want it, thee knows...

This all matters in terms of accuracy so I find the endless shoehorning of race issues and non-white characters into old stories silly and wrong - because the young and ignorant will believe that is the truth.

But as a film it passes the time, though I prefer THE GREAT ESCAPER which I gave 3 stars.

This gets 2.5 stars. Good in parts.