Company of Heroes (film)
Company of Heroes | |
---|---|
Directed by | Don Michael Paul |
Written by | Danny Bilson Paul De Meo David Reed |
Based on | Company of Heroes by Relic Entertainment |
Produced by | Jeffery Beach Phillip J. Roth |
Starring | Tom Sizemore Chad Michael Collins Vinnie Jones Dimitri Diatchenko Neal McDonough Sam Spruell Jürgen Prochnow |
Cinematography | Martin Chichov |
Edited by | Cameron Hallenbeck |
Music by | Frederik Wiedmann |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Sony Pictures Home Entertainment |
Release date |
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Running time | 100 minutes |
Country | United States |
Languages | English German |
Company of Heroes is a 2013 American direct-to-video war thriller film directed by Don Michael Paul.[1] The screenplay was co-written by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo. It was loosely based on the video game of the same name. De Meo would later write Company of Heroes 2.
Plot[]
With the Germans apparently near defeat in the latter part of World War II, a squad of American soldiers from the 2nd Infantry Division on a routine mission near Elsenborn in the Belgian Ardennes encounter a surprisingly strong German tank destroyer and infantry force. After a fierce firefight, the Americans escape and try to make their way back to their own lines to report the German surge. En route, they stumble across a German experimental site, still smoldering with flames from some devastating event. Surprisingly, this site is in Heidenfeld, Thuringia in Germany, although their own lines are hundreds of kilometers away in Belgium.[2]
They come across an American OSS agent suffering from horrific burn wounds, and learn that the Germans are close to development of a super-bomb which will enable them to turn the tide of war and achieve victory. The American agent, knowing that he is near death, asks the soldiers to complete his mission: to find the bomb; disable it; and extract the scientist developing it, who wishes to defect. With their sergeant and other NCOs dead, the youngest of the soldiers, Nathaniel "Nate" Burrows, Jr. (Chad Michael Collins) and Dean Ransom (Tom Sizemore) (a cook who had been demoted from Lieutenant after the D-Day landings) lead them deep into Nazi territory. There, they are joined by escaped British airman Brent Willoughby (Vinnie Jones) and Red Army soldier Ivan Puzharsky (Dimitri Diatchenko). Discovered and pursued, the Allies make a series of hair-breadth escapes from vastly superior numbers of well-armed Nazi soldiers and finally make contact with a woman named Kestrel (Melia Kreiling), their link to the bomb and to the scientist Dr. Luca Gruenewald (Jürgen Prochnow).[3]
Cast[]
- Tom Sizemore as Lieutenant Dean Ransom
- Chad Michael Collins as Nathaniel "Nate" Burrows Jr.
- Vinnie Jones as Brent Willoughby
- Dimitri Diatchenko as Ivan Puzharski
- Neal McDonough as Lieutenant Joe Conti
- Sam Spruell as Sergeant Matherson
- Richard Sammel as Commandant Beimler
- Melia Kreiling as Kestrel
- Philip Rham as Lieutenant Schott
- Alastair Mackenzie as Duncan Chambliss
- Jürgen Prochnow as Dr. Luca Gruenewald
- Peter Ladjev as Ricky Rizzo
- Ivo Arakov as Johnny Lewis
- Atanas Srebrev as O.S.S. Officer
- Zara Dimitrova as Coat-Check Girl
- Hristo Balabanov as Nazi Guard
- Uti Bachvarov as German Cook
- Alexander Nosikoff as Opera Singer
- Vanya Rankova as Beimler's Wife
- Brian Glanney as Beck (uncredited)
- Velibor Topic as Soviet Soldier (uncredited)
Reception[]
Aaron Peck at home entertainment website High-Def Digest gave the film three stars and said: "It's a decent little DTV movie about World War II, but it isn't able to crawl out of the self-made trench of its miniscule budget".[4]
References[]
- ^ Plunkett, Luke. "Wait, There's a Company of Heroes Movie? And Tom Sizemore's in it?". Kotaku.com. Kotaku.com. Retrieved 3 October 2015.
- ^ Gallagher, Brian (26 February 2013). "EXCLUSIVE: Tom Sizemore on Life, Sobriety, and 'Company of Heroes'". Movieweb. Movieweb. Retrieved 3 October 2015.
- ^ Peck, Aaron. "Company of Heroes: The Movie Itself: Our Reviewer's Take". High-Def Digest. High-Def Digest. Retrieved 3 October 2015.
- ^ "Company of Heroes Blu-ray Review | High Def Digest".
External links[]
- 2013 films
- 2013 direct-to-video films
- 2010s war thriller films
- American war thriller films
- American films
- Live-action films based on video games
- American World War II films
- Company of Heroes
- Films set in Belgium
- Films shot in Bulgaria
- Films directed by Don Michael Paul
- Films scored by Frederik Wiedmann
- Ardennes in fiction
- Films about Nazi Germany
- Films set in Thuringia