Review of Soldier of Orange (1977) by I Don't Know W — 08 Mar 2011

Paul Verhoeven's dutch war-picture Soldaat van Oranje is a perfect and well-made film, the plot, the unfunny jokes, and the near death experiance. What I mean about unfunny jokes is that some of the people in this film pick the wrong time and place to come up with a joke. One example is when a farmer says to some dutch soldiers that he have seen some german behind some threes nearby, and instead of catching some germans they caught a young couple having sex in the hay, and the farmer comes behind the soldiers and says "April Fool". And that really pisses every one of, including me.

This is the story about a group of collage students who is slip away from each other durring the second world war, some joins the resistance, some joins the nazis and some become traitors. The story begins with a freshman party where freshmens are being humiliated by the older students by wearing old grey sheets and cut of all their hair and treat them like animals. This is a picture of what the near future will bring. One of the freshmens is Erik (Rutger Hauer) who'm we follow thought the whole war. He joins the resistance and runway to England where he gets military training and missions by the brits. You can see and feel how the dutch think about the british, arrogant and snobbish. and that's how they feel about Col. Rafalli played wonderfully by Edward Fox.

Soldaat van Oranje is a good and exciting war picture with all the ingredients intact.