Overlord

Score:  B+

Directed by Julius Avery
Starring Jovan Adepo, Wyatt Russell, Mathilde Ollivier, and Pilou Asbaek
Running time: 110 minutes
Rated R

Long Story Short:  Overlord brings the gritty, realistic war drama of recent classics into contact with a taste of Hollywood horror, and it works.  A cast of unknowns, mostly playing WWII soldiers, does well and helps set a believable war-time scenario well before anything goes bump in the night.  When it finally does, it's effectively creepy, but overall fairly restrained in the horror department.  Recommended for genre fans, or even those just looking for a well-made action film.


As the sun sets on the day before D-Day, a squad of paratroopers sits nervously in their plane crossing over the English Channel, on the way to a mission behind enemy lines.  Nazi air defenses throw the final approach into chaos, though Private Boyce (Adepo) and a few others manage to land safely in the night.  A small group of survivors find their way to a nearby French town close to their objective: a Nazi radio tower.  A young French woman, Chloe (Ollivier), gives them shelter, and Boyce and others scout the location.  He finds more than just the Nazi military installation, though; beneath a church, bizarre and disturbing experiments lurk.  Short on time, with the D-Day invasion just hours away, the team is forced to reconsider their priorities as they realize the world-changing threat emanating from this small, quiet French village.

Overlord's cast is filled with little-known faces, but the ensemble does impressive work in bringing this historical fantasy to life.  Jovan Adepo plays the primary character, Private Boyce, following him from the chaos of the paratroop landing to the hell that awaits him and his team in France.  Following on a small but nice role in Fences, Adepo is understated but rock solid here as a GI at first frightened and overwhelmed, but who finds his footing as both the personal and broader stakes develop.  This courage under fire is about as deep as the development goes for him, but he makes it convincing, and makes for a very rootable hero to boot.  Wyatt Russell also does quite well as the team's commander.  He plays a rather familiar role as the cold, mission-focused leader, but he does it well, putting his own unique stamp on the part.  Mathilde Ollivier appears at first to be in the damsel-in-distress role as Chloe, but she's also the strikingly strong head of her war-torn household, and believably takes up arms, too, in defending her family.  Pilou Asbaek (GoT's Euron) is more than menacing enough as the main Nazi villain, with a dose of creepiness that helps bridge the war-horror film divide.  In smaller roles as soldiers, Iain de Caestecker gets a brief showcase, and John Magaro helps sell the war setting by looking like he was born to play a soldier (and, in fact, has several other similar credits).

Overlord is a relatively restrained film, considering its war-horror genre combination, and it's very solidly made, even though it doesn't ultimately leave a big impression.  The film is really more accurately described a war movie, with elements of horror and fantasy.  If you've seen productions like Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers, you'll be familiar with the overall structure - and, at least for me, also impressed by the level of historical accuracy and realistic filming.  The filmmakers could have lazily used a generic war setting on which to lay their very non-historical fantasy elements, but I appreciated the detail and specificity, and it served to ground the story effectively.  It also helps that there are no star actors involved, allowing you to focus better on the characters (themselves, nobodies) as presented, yet the cast is still perfectly strong as previously mentioned.  Really, just about all major elements of the film are rock solid; the script is good (a minimum of genre cliches) and the pacing is steady, allowing just enough space to consider its mysteries.  The action is well done; most of it, especially the drop over Normandy, depicting the brutality of war without gratuitous gore.  There is at least as much quiet tension as actual shooting, reflecting the practical needs of the soldiers' mission, providing a good contrast in the types of suspense.

When the horror and fantasy elements finally show up - quite a ways into the film - they take full advantage of it while maintaining the overall integrity of the tone.  There are only glimpses and ghoulish groans in the night at first, existing within the war setting.  But while a soldier's abrupt transformation is shocking, the horror elements stay just as creepy as they come out more into the open.  The finale starts to shift the film into more of a Hollywood actioner (though a secondary line definitely keeps the war footing), but it results in a satisfying conclusion.  Still, some things hold it back from being a (multi)genre classic.  The characters are good but not really memorable.  The historical realism is good, too, but blunts the impact at times, even of the intense air drop scene, because we've seen variations of it before.  And there's no real defining moment or scene to bring it all together and/or showcase.  It's content to run a tight ship throughout, and that's alright.

***

Overlord is a quality action/genre film, but certainly not the one I was expecting.  The biggest temptation, it would seem to me, would be to amplify yet also simplify war movie cliches, then bring in that most timeless of Hollywood villains, the Nazi (literal) monsters to slay as the ultimate evil.  So, first and foremost, kudos to the filmmakers for going in pretty much the opposite direction (even if the climax gives in to it a little).  The film does right by war predecessors like SPR, and its essentially no-name cast does a great job bringing both genre elements to life.  Only time will tell, but I don't think it will necessarily stand out as a cult classic.  Still, if you want to see an enjoyable, well-done action film, this is a good choice for a night at the movies - or later on, as a change-up option on Netflix.




By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59021690