Review of Spoils of War (2009) by Mitchel H — 27 Jul 2012

Ever know a guy growing up who was sooooo into WWII? He was the guy who had all the war movies, GI Joes, dressed in military uniform every Hallowe'en, made up wargames for school projects, and gave in to propaganda easier than... well you get the point. Spoils of War feels like a film made by one of those guys. Somehow, he managed to get enough people together and combined with his large collection of army uniforms, weapons and vehicles he's collected, felt he could make a WWII movie. His dream.

Well, someone should have sent him to film school first. The acting is pretty bad, the cinematography is all over the map, the story is simple and terribly written and told AND with the thousands of rounds used up in the film, NOBODY RELOADS!!!

Spoils of War does have one piece of creativity that I thought was cool and detrimental at the same time. The filmmaker has used lots of actual war footage and spliced it into the film. Only problem is... he uses it too much; decides his story isn't good enough and starts giving poor history lessons; he also includes a commercial for cigarettes in the middle of the film for no apparent reason.

Spoils of War could have been a somewhat entertaining film if more attention had been paid to flushing out the story being told. If it didn't come across as some WWII fanboy's wetdream, I think there was enough in the simple story that they could have done something with it. The characters were there. A few more scenes of dialogue and character development might have done the film a lot of good.

We've all seen the "no animals were harmed in the making of this movie" listing in the credits which Spoils of War includes (though I don't remember any animals in the film) but this is the first time I've seen a film's credits close with an "all nazis in this film WERE killed" message. Which combined with the add on of a war cartoon just shows the immaturity of the filmmakers.