THE AGE OF HEROES

by Mark'd Commode

5 out of  10 

Release Date: 20 May 2011

Director: Adrian Vitoria (The Crew)

Cast: Sean Bean, Danny Dyer, Aksel Hennie, William Houston, Stephen Walters, John Dagleish, Izabella Miko, Rosie Fellner, Sebastian Street, Theo Barklem-Biggs and James D’Arcy

Writer: Ed Scates & Adrian Vitoria

Trailer: THE AGE OF HEROES

The Age Of Heroes is a competent and enjoyable yarn about the origins of the SAS.  Set around their first mission led from the back by Ian Fleming  (JAMES D’ARCY – W/E) during the Second World War in Norway, this is a decent throwback to ‘Dad’ movies like Wild Geese or The Dirty Dozen.  The only upsetting factor is that it’s been made in the 21st Century and the budgets at the disposal of producers nowadays for a film like this are obviously a great deal smaller.  It’s here that The Age Of Heroes is let down, obvious restraints on spectacle hobble what could have been a genuine contender for best British Independent movie of 2011.  Danny Dyer (JUST FOR THE RECORD) is well cast as an opportunist who escapes from the stockade to be a member of Sean Bean‘s (LORD OF THE RINGS – THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING) team of elite soldiers. Having been found guilty for desertion and assault of a higher ranking office, Dyer seizes the opportunity to escape his prison by hitching a ride at gun point with Bean.  Given an “only in the movies” chance to prove himself, Dyer becomes our ‘in’ to the SAS.  There is a Windtalkers style plot to defend a code at all costs too as well as to destroy a massive radar station in the Norwegian wilderness.  Dyer is charged with killing the codebreaker (JOHN DAGLIESH) should he fall into enemy hands.  The trip to Norway is authentic and the inclusion of Aksel Hennie (HEADHUNTERS) as the translator and guide is a bonus. The acting is very good and committed across the board. The limited action sequences are gripping but small scale.  The showdown at the climax is about on the same scale as a minor scuffle in a big budget American equivalent.  This is not a whinge however because The Age Of Heroes plays well to it’s strengths.  The Germans are painted black but are barely present as they would be in real life.  A massacre is particularly effective, adding more depth to the SAS team’s missions and essentially giving us a reason to boo the bad guys.  Sean Bean always sets a standard, and he was born to play roles like this.  His make-up artist needs to be shot though.  He had a visibly white and powdery fave throughout, which was very distracting yet funny.  Danny Dyer reminds us that given a half-reasonable script he can convince as good as the rest.  He’s well-cast and we actually root for him to succeed.

Only an abrupt and rushed ending / epilogue that comes out of nowhere serve to remind us of the budget constraints. That and the small scale but still very good action scenes.  The ending seems glued on from out of nowhere. Did the production plan further scenes but ultimately rushed to film an ending when the money ran out? We’ll never know. But a good ending is important because for the bulk of the film it proves to be a gripping piece of old school entertainment.  This serves to de-rail a film that would be all too easy to dismiss as just another Danny Dyer cheapo.  And that snobby attitude does The Age Of Heroes a disservice.

5 out of 10 – The Age Of Heroes is far from perfect but it is a great example of managing great action spectacles with a low budget.  Danny Dyer reminds us that he can be a vital and at times brilliant actor to watch.  The story is great and the acting good across the board.  The locations are stunning and it hit’s all the right emotional chords. That’s superb news for a DVD that I see in the petrol station 4 for a tenner bin.

**rejoice – joe pesci II enjoyed a Britpic at long last!!! review below!!!

WHAT HAVE I SEEN THAT PERSON IN BEFORE?

One thought on “THE AGE OF HEROES”

  1. They don’t make ‘em like this any more. Or rather, they’ve made this one like this, but that isn’t quite how they used to make ‘em but this isn’t far off the mark. What in blue blazes am I blithering about? Why, Age of Heroes, a World War Two yarn, a good old-fashioned romp – the sort they used to put on TV on Sunday afternoons for your grandad to snooze through, waking only to tell your nan not to turn it over. This is a tale of derring-do dashingly done by the likes of Michael Redgrave and Trevor Howard, with good cockney, and other ethnic, support from Harry Fowler and Gordon Jackson whilst Celia Johnson looks helplessly on, upper lips stiffly quivering as Tommy finally beats Jerry (you know, I never noticed that before – were the MGM cartoons really some sort of war allegory?) and Stanley Holloway offers light relief. We are back in the genre where a war film is about adventure and bravery, and madcap schemes which will outfox the krauts, and didn’t have the obligation to remind us that war is a bad thing (that was a given in these old films – after all, everyone involved had lived (or was living) through a war). It’s not destined to be a classic by a long chalk, but it has a great deal going for it – it’s a stiff upper lip of a film, made forty or more years out of its time.

    The set-up is nice and simple (simplicity is an under-rated quality which a lot of films would do well to emulate): Ian Fleming (the James Bond scribe) sets up a commando unit (which may or may not be related to the SAS; the DVD cover is a bit confusing and the film itself doesn’t clarify matters) and we follow them on their first mission behind enemy lines as they try to get their hands on some sort of radar equipment (again the film is a bit fuzzy here, deliberately this time – although basically a MacGuffin, it would have been nice to know precisely what it was and what effect it had on the war in the long run, but the main thing we need to know is that it’s stuff that’s better off in British hands than in the clutches of filthy foreign Germans). Danny Dyer turns up as a plucky young soldier who has found himself in a military prison following a headbutt-related misunderstanding with a superior officer. Fortunately he gets another chance after improbably kidnapping commando leader Sean Bean (the only bad scene in the film really, though Bean is good throughout, doing his always trusty soldier-in-charge-acting). Once Dyer’s joined the fledgling team the film picks up noticeably. The training sequences aren’t laboured, the arrival in Norway and subsequent execution of the mission are tautly delivered; in short, the film tells its story efficiently and even tensely at times. It’s a very small-scale film, focusing on a single mission, rather than some sweeping epic trying to persuade you that these were the chaps who actually won the war; and this is one of the film’s strengths: it refuses to bite off more than it can chew.

    One minor niggle is the extent to which this is ‘true’. Was there really an Operation Grendel or is this just an imagined version of what might have happened? Did individuals such as Jones, Rains and Steinar exist? Are we seeing characters, who, when they were real people, gave their lives? It’s not essential that we know these answers but it would have been helpful. And it does relate to the film’s one big, glaring fault: the conclusion, which is horribly abrupt, almost mid-sentence. We don’t even see what happens to certain key characters – now, it is fair enough that if they are based on real people and their fates are unknown, then the film should retain that ambiguity. But here what happens is that we cut away from them to see (what turns out to be) the climax of the film, and then… nothing. There is no sense of us taking our leave; there’s no ‘will-they-get-out-alive-or-won’t-they’ shot to leave us with. For all I know the film company forgot about them and some pretty decent actors are still wandering around the Norwegian forests (or wherever it was filmed; France looked like somewhere in England, but Norway looked Norwegian enough for me). But if they were real characters would a caption at the end have been so difficult? And if they were made up couldn’t we have seen them die? Or even turn up in the final reel? I’m sorry for banging on about this but I did feel somewhat short-changed by the ending and, well, a good ending is pretty important in a film, particularly if it’s a film which is as unexpectedly strong as this one.

    For the most part, Age of Heroes ticks off most of the boxes you’d expect of an old-fashioned Sunday afternoon war film (though they’d have to bleep the swearing – oh what I’d have given to hear Dyer saying stuff like ‘we’re jolly well going to stick it to the Hun’ with Bean replying ‘that blighter’s beginning to really get my goat’). There are some decent action sequences, the Germans rarely shoot as accurately as the British (and gratuitous Dutchman), but do amass a creditable body count, and the leading German is almost comically camp (particularly when on skis). The Germans are generally kept at a distance, so their appearances centre-stage are all the stronger: the filming of a massacre of civilians is done as swiftly and clinically as the massacre itself. There’s a shouty Scot (William Houston channelling a mixture of Harry Andrews and Sean Connery) and lots of arcane soldier stuff: Dyer being punished by having to hold his gun above his head. At times Bean reminded me of Timothy Dalton. Eventually I began to see a connection – two actors suggesting Bond-like characteristics, plus Ian Fleming as their boss. Now, I’ve never seen a whole Bond film so there may be loads of in-jokes and references that I’ve missed (there are the gadgets that are the objective of the operation, and an unnecessary and irrelevant action prologue I suppose). James d’Arcy as Fleming is a lot better than I remember him when he first got leading roles, and you can well believe that he’s the sort of man spinning several plates simultaneously.

    What impresses about Age of Heroes (awful generic title by the way) is that without sentimentality or forced comedy, the camaraderie of the unit comes across, that these men whose lives depend on each other are a team (even though some actors are underused it doesn’t feel like a star vehicle) and this is perhaps why Dyer is so effective. True, I still hanker for an older version of the film with Kenneth More replacing Bean, John Mills in Dyer’s place, Richard Todd as Fleming, with support from Anton Diffring and Jack Hawkins. But that’s just me. A qualified success, worth a whirl if you like war films, but just remember you’ll be making a cup of tea about five minutes earlier than you’d expect.

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