Pathfinders: In the Company of Strangers   Starring: Michael Conner Humphreys and Chistopher Serrone High Fliers Films RRP: £12.99 Certificate: 15 Available 09 May 2011

Half an hour before the Normandy landings, the pathfinders were dropped behind enemy lines to coordinate the airborne invasion. Alone, in small numbers, this disparate group had to survive the might of the entire German army...

Pathfinders: In the Company of Strangers (2011 - 1 hr, 38 min, 12 sec) attempts to tell this important piece of WW II history. The film was directed by Curt A. Sindelar, who co-wrote the script with Charlie Armstrong.

With such a strong premise for a film, it’s difficult to see just how Sindelar could have made such a dull movie.

We follow the guys from their first meeting to their eventual mission into enemy territory, a bit like Band of Brother but with no heart or passion and that was the real shame of the film. The characters are so badly realised that it’s difficult to care whether they live or die; this is not helped by a script littered with war film clichés. The film also suffers from a surfeit of close up shots which exist for no understandable reason, it’s as if the director had no idea what differing shots conveyed to an audience.

The acting swings wildly between over emoting to flat and uninteresting. Let me be clear that this isn’t about the lack of budget, which the film evidently laboured under. There are many good American and British war film which consists of only a handful of people, which remain riveting to watch. Pathfinders was more like watching paint dry. There was no passion, no fear, and no reason to care about the characters.

What was most annoying about the film was that the subject matter was a gold mine, if you forgive the fact that the director did not appear to know what he was doing with each shot, there were some interesting snippets of dialogue, acting and directing, but not enough to rescue the overall project.

The disc supplied was just the film, burned to a DVD so I have no idea if the finished film comes with any extras, certainly the presentation of the movie didn’t help the overall impression.

Ultimately, I find that there is little here to recommend the film, at best, it represents a missed opportunity.

3

Charles Packer