Director: Matthijs van Heijningen Jr
Starring: Susan Radder, Gijs Blom, Jamie Flatters
Year: 2020
I hate to say it, but Forgotten Battle is one of the few boring WWII films, failing to take hold of the moment and capture its inherent drama & terror. It’s a time period ripe with incredible stories, true heroism, real evil, but this movie misses the mark ever so slightly, veering off, sadly, into tedious territory. Still, a good history lesson well-displayed is hard to pass up, and this Netflix war drama won’t receive much ire; I simply wish it had been better.
Operation Market Garden, or the attempt to end the war swiftly that swiftly failed, began in the Netherlands with the hope of streamlining a path straight to Berlin. It didn’t end the War before Christmas 1944 as was hoped, but it did open the door, along with D-Day, for the Allied invasion of Europe, and for that it should be remembered proudly. This is the true story of the beginning of the Battle of the Scheldt, where Canadian and British troops took the beaches and islands of the Netherlands as a foot hold against the Germans. Three young people are our vehicle into history, as Dutch Resistance meets Hitler Youth, and the fate of the world hangs in the balance.
Forgotten Battle is, at the very least, an interesting portrayal of events at the beginning of this fascinating maneuver, one that would ultimately fail but only because it failed to end the War as quickly as the Allies would have dreamed. Still, taking back the Netherlands was an important step, and this was the start. We see the War from a Dutch defector to the German soldiery, a young Dutch girl trying to keep her family safe, and a British paratrooper fighting to stay alive, and it’s captivating as far as history goes. But that’s where it ends, and otherwise this is a surprisingly lackluster project. The characters’ struggles and deaths aren’t very effective, and the action feels a little forced, the film itself simply coming off as amateurish and too reliant on the subject material. Good but not great, Forgotten Battle is on Netflix for those who love WWII history, but I doubt its audience stretches far beyond that.
My rating: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆