This is a good movie of men in war, not a war movie Hollywood style. It shows the madness of war and (at the beginning at least) reminds me of the surreal atmosphere of another great movie, "Il deserto dei tartari". El Alamein - Linea di Fuoco is a movie that gives at last some justice to the brave men who fought and died in Africa for their country, at that time led by a dangerous gambler, not because they were fascists (those stayed far from the battlefront) but because they felt it was their duty. They didn't lack courage or skills but the means of more advanced industrial powers - the German-Anglo-Saxon reputation in warfare being largely due to superior production and logistics. Showing how Italy could fall in love for "Il Duce" was clearly out of this movie scope and reach, but perhaps it will help reading again this quotation attributed to a world expert in this field, Herr Hermann Goering: "People can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country". In our days, our leaders do not even have to show us we are being attacked - see headlines for "preemptive war", "Iraq", "Iran"...

The problem with this movie is not so much the movie itself, though the movie does not lack in technical glitches, but rather the historical context in which the story is set. The director tries to tell a story about Italian soldiers in World War Two, suggesting that they are hapless victims of incompetent commanders who basically had them fighting in a hopeless cause, period. This narrow theme produces a two-dimensional story that completely ignores the fundamental reason why the Italians were in the fighting in the first place: to achieve the strategic goals of Adolf Hitler. As a result, this movie is dramatically flat. The Italian soldiers are portrayed as self-sacrificing, suffering and heroic when in fact they were invaders who were brought all their problems on themselves. In an interesting twist, the British are portrayed as faceless automatons who mercilessly drive through the depleted Italian lines, as if it were the British who were the bad guys. That the Italian soldiers were capable of acts of courage on the battlefield is not the question. Rather, the question is why were they fighting in the first place, and any movie, especially a movie that is set in World War Two, that avoids dealing with that question is fundamentally flawed.

How to make a film in Italy.A script that has anything original or "important": war is bad, that's it. But it's a "liberal" point of view, so it's good and it's enough.The same actors seen in every Italian film adding the usual comedian out of a night show (Favino) to have a "known one", and an homage to "bigger names" of the director's circle, giving a cameo to Orlando (Moretti's best one) and Cederna (Salvatore's own).Bad acting: in Italian, every actor murmured in some local "patois", and hardly you can understand what they say. That's a cliché of every Italian war movie, that Italian soldiers uttered strong local accents: war movie or comic film. Not else.Even budget wasn't SO low, no attempt to research what's the right uniforms, vehicles, terms, historical details, as none of the blue-nosed liberal producers wants to talk with the "militarist" who collect or study military history.Spice all with "I'm an artist" attitude, and you have a typical Italian movie.

Hey, we are in 2002, we have seen a lot of war movies like this.Kubrick's "Paths of glory" in the fifties, and then all those movies about the war in Vietnam. Ok, it is not bad, but it's easy to make a movie like this after Kubrick, Coppola, and so on. The only new thing here is the soundtrack. I was expecting something more by Emilio Solfrizzi (Lt. Fiore), but Favino and Briguglia were ok. 6/10