The Stasi has never actually seen the whole of Platoon or Apocalypse Now or Full Metal Jacket and gave up after the first 10 mins of Heaven and Earth and so we decided to do a review on a film that is a bit left-field but still about the Vietnam War. This is a short film by Ola Paulakoski and the entire film can be viewed at the bottom of this post. The movie claims to be the only Vietnam movie shot in Sweden and the first, and only Vietnam war/werewolf movie ever made, and all was made for $US2,000.

The story is an ex-CIA agent has become a werewolf and is now running amok during the Vietnam war and the narrator is recounting the story of what happened and how it was killed at the end. The problem sometime when it’s a narration, you know the person must have survived so that he can tell the story so they is no twist. Where in The Sixth Sense it was so obvious he was dead at the start, and I felt a fool waiting for the twist that everybody said would blow your mind when you already assumed him being dead was part of the story at the start, but hey I’m a genius, yet I did like the Keyser Söze twist from the Usual Suspects. In a 20 minute film, you don’t expect to have too much of a detailed story, you want something to happen straight away and that it makes sense and it flows kinda straightforward. An example of Cold War literature which would make a great 20 minute film is Twinkle Twinkle Little Spy by Len Deighton as that is a very short and simple book and things happen one after the other and there is no hidden meanings or sub-plots in the book.

When a films budget is only $2k you don’t expect much and you therefore accept this will be reflected in the costumes (blokes in t-shirts running about with a helmet on), the classified report is just a pad of lined A4 paper and some of the acting is below par, however you are willing to forgive all that. The language in the film doesn’t sit right and Maddocks, the narrator, shouldn’t be in the War as he can’t use his gun and fights rather poorly. However, he being the hero does have the phenomenon which is what I term “The Rocky Punch” in his arsenal. This punch features in most action films where the bad guy is absolutely kicking the living daylights out of the hero, when suddenly the hero throws a lucky punch, which stuns the bad guy, gives the hero new hope and the music starts and you know the battle is going his way now. Maddocks pulls out the punch and knife in his fight with the werewolf after he has internal trouble using his gun and thinks maybe it’s better if he goes the kung-fu fighting style rather than filling a beast of the dark with lead. There are other characters in the movie which are no more believable, Turner who is a gun toting cliché who sacrifices it all for the team and the fat kid from the Fat Boy Slim Album cover who is wearing a badly painted helmet.

I have to be honest and say I’ve never watched a whole horror movie, I exclude teen-wolf and its sequels from that, however this wasn’t really a horror movie as it felt like you were watching at times a movie you find during a computer game. I wont write much more as it will take you longer to read this post than actually watch the film so in conclusion, the film is a bit rubbish, but thoroughly enjoyable.