For a war movie, I found Pathfinders: In the Company of Strangers to be very slow. With nothing happening in camp during the first half, the movie bogs down early on. The “conflict” of a bet between the guys in the 508 and the 504 about when the invasion would begin is not exactly riveting stuff. What is inexcusable though is that even when the action starts, it is still pretty boring. The whole point of a war movie is the action, and a story like this should have been filled with it.
In this, I wonder what directors Curt A. Sindelar and Michael Connor Humphries were thinking. They copped the black and white business from Spielberg, but what about the action? The scenes of the Allied heroes engaged in desperate one-on-one combat with the German soldiers should have been riveting. But the scenes are tedious and dull. How is this even possible?
Maybe Pathfinders was originally intended as a Lifetime or Hallmark Channel movie. It is the only explanation that I can come up with for this being such a soapy treatment of an event that should have been incredibly exciting. Maybe it is just me, but I expect a war flick to be action-packed. Pathfinders is not. Obviously, that is not the market that this film is after.
I mentioned Saving Private Ryan earlier, and it is a film that deserves its stong rating, as the violence is pretty rough at times. This is not the case with Pathfinders. If the action of a typical war movie is too much for you, then Pathfinders offers a different way of telling the story. The men who participated in this mission performed a vital role, and absolutely deserve credit for it. The heart of Pathfinders: In the Company of Strangers is certainly not in question, but my expectations were of something very different.
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