Company of Heroes (film)
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, best known for The Rocketeer, as well as several video games (James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing, Medal of Honor: Rising Sun). It was loosely based on the video game of the same name (to which DeMeo would later write the sequel).
Company of Heroes | |
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Blu-ray Cover Art | |
Directed by | Don Michael Paul |
Produced by | Jeffery Beach Phillip J. Roth |
Written by | Danny Bilson Paul De Meo David Reed |
Based on | Company of Heroes by Relic Entertainment |
Starring | Tom Sizemore Chad Michael Collins Vinnie Jones Dimitri Diatchenko Neal McDonough Sam Spruell Jürgen Prochnow |
Music by | Frederik Wiedmann |
Cinematography | Martin Chichov |
Edited by | Cameron Hallenbeck |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Sony Pictures Home Entertainment |
Release date |
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Running time | 100 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English German |
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 Lt. Dean Ransom
- Chad Michael Collins as Nathaniel "Nate" Burrows, Jr.
- Vinnie Jones as Brent Willoughby
- Dimitri Diatchenko as Ivan Puzharski
- Neal McDonough as Lt. Joe Conti
- Sam Spruell as Sgt. Matherson
- Richard Sammel as Commandant Beimler
- Melia Kreiling as Kestrel
- Philip Rham as Lt. 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. "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.
- https://bluray.highdefdigest.com/8238/company_heroes.html