I almost wrote this review before I saw the movie . . Something along the lines of " Oh dear trust Uncle Sam to make a film on how they turned up to save the Limeys in World War One etc etc " What I should have done is remember the old phrase " Never assume anything because it makes an ass out of you and me " . That said it does suffer from the low budget independent film look and feel and watching the early scenes you'd be totally forgiven for thinking this was a dreary TVM . It's painfully obvious the budget didn't stretch to filming somewhere , anywhere that might resemble the Western Front in 1917-18 where a few short years of war had turned the landscape in to something resembling a muddy version of the surface of the Moon . This has led to some people on this page to dismiss COMPANY K out of hand . If you're expecting epic battle scenes then this isn't the film for you but does manage to make anti-war statements better than a lot of films with ten times the budget I've never read the book and some people might suggest that the film suffers from sticking too rigidly to the book with its episodic nature and its character-centric vignettes but I disagree . All too often in war films the characters are hidden behind uniforms and helmets and it's difficult to keep track of who is who hence we get movies like THE LONGEST DAY and THE THIN RED LINE where a host of household names appear in cameos simply to remind the audience who the character is . The storytelling technique of COMPANY K negates the need for a big name cast and the obvious use of exposition pointing out who the character is , we're introduced to the m instantly via on screen caption and his works very well . It might not be subtle but this isn't a subtle film and deals with the usual war is hell , something it never hints at in the opening . Let me just repeat that the opening scenes give the impression you're going to be watching an anti-septic PG certificate made for television production which isn't what happens . It's not explicit war porn either but concentrates of the psychological horrors of war and was actually quite shocked at some of the on screen happenings carried out by the US Marine Corps . In war movies Americans are always the good guys and behave exemplary no matter the provocations no matter what and they're always real men untouched by any horror but not in this movie . Finally a word on the musical score by Craig McConnell and Donald Stark which can be criticised as being on one hand intrusive and manipulative but is very effective and atmospheric

I understand that the book was episodic, but that does not mean it translates into a good film that way.Poorly directed and acted, not to mention produced. How tough would it have been for the actors to at least have gotten haircuts? Not the best film about WW1. Not even close. Perhaps having one person being the producer, writer and director is not the best idea? The actors were not in the least convincing.Someone should have said "Whoa" before this was put together. Oh, and I wrote this review using the same disjointed style the director of this movie used. Do you think it made for a better review this way? I did not think so.

I write this review on Memorial Day 2008 and there's lots of talk on television and elsewhere about the sacrifice of soldiers in Iraq. In my opinion, those young women and men are giving their lives and their mental stability to an unnecessary cause created to satisfy the ego of a madman. But what about the soldiers in the Great War, the War to End All Wars - World War I? Those soldiers are the subject of Company K.William March was the penname for William Edward Campbell who, in 1933, published Company K which was hailed as a masterpiece by critics and writers alike and has been referred to as the American view of the hopelessness and brutality - just as effective and shattering as Erich Maria Remarque's classic anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front. March was a popular novelist and story writer of the 30's, 40's, and 50's. Today, his most well-know novel is The Bad Seed.March was a reclusive man who was hard to get to know. He suffered a number of nervous breakdowns - as they were called in his day - that were surely post traumatic stress episodes due to his experiences as a Marine in WWI. He died from a series of heart attacks in 1954 at the height of his writing career.The soldiers in Company K are not the great generals and leaders whose names have gone down in history but are the grunts who actually did the fighting and dying. They are not great heroes but just young men who are trying to survive the madness into which they have been injected. They are not idealized or romanticized. Some do bad things. Some are so scared they run. Some carry out insane orders. Some carry out inhumane orders. Most of those who survive go home to lead normal lives, but there are some who are never able to remove from their minds the horrors of deeds seen or deeds done.The film, Company K is not a great production. It's episodic but in a very choppy way. Is that the fault of the director or the editor? Who knows? But within each episode, the viewer is offered a realistic view of these young men caught in circumstances beyond their control. There is no glory - only guts.There are no well-known actors in this film. All are just good actors who do a good job at showing us all of the aspects of these men thrown together into the snake pit of battle.There are uncountable films about women and men in war. Some are extraordinary while some are really bad. Company K falls somewhere in the middle and it is surely worth a viewing in order to get to know some very human men.

Company K by Robert Clem is a serious work that should be seen, and, more importantly, re-seen.The film begins with a quotation from William March's autobiographical World War I novel of the same name, but it could have begun with the quotation from Erich Maria Remarque's novel, All Quiet on the Western Front: "This book is neither an accusation nor a confession. It will simply tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war." There are differences. Remarque's book was about German soldiers, whereas Company K is about American soldiers. And Company K is more of an accusation and a confession, although the film has an overall documentary feel.The plot is a string of episodes, each focusing on a key experience of a different soldier in the unit. The structure follows March's plan for his book where each story is placed on a wheel and the wheel spun "in an unending circle of pain." Some viewers might find this narrative structure too unusual because there isn't really a high climax. The end of the war is simply a brief episode bridging to the postwar traumas of Private Joe Delaney (March) and others. This anticlimactic episode is handled subtly: The soldiers don't jump up and throw their helmets in the air; they sigh, stare dumbly, and drop their helmets to the ground.Many other episodes have similar ironic strength. A country soldier who has never seen an airplane exclaims one's approach; he is strafed. Inexperienced officers talk Ivy League politics but make battlefield blunders; one attempts suicide and another is murdered by an exhausted enlisted man. Two soldiers with grumbling stomachs eat blood-soaked enemy pumpernickel. An experienced French prostitute admits that she had promised to save herself for her boyfriend until he was killed early in the war.In a prologue scene before the opening credits, Delaney tells his wife of his book about the war. She advises him to leave out the part about murdering a group of German prisoners. It's a well-chosen prologue -- the events surrounding that episode and its aftermath are the film's most powerful.The young actors are excellent and perform with conviction. Dialog is well written and delivered. The authenticity of uniforms, weapons, vehicles, and battlefield locations is impressive. There is no cast of a thousand extras, but the judicious use of actual WWI footage expands the scope some.Company K is one of those few films that get better with re-seeing. Fresh nuances appear each time – wiping blood off bayonets, soldiers crossing themselves as shells falls on friends, battle-fatigued faces – and the effect grows. This film ought to be studied alongside the novel in college courses.