{"id":13287,"date":"2016-03-18T09:12:29","date_gmt":"2016-03-18T14:12:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=13287"},"modified":"2016-03-18T09:12:29","modified_gmt":"2016-03-18T14:12:29","slug":"war-movies-worth-a-damn-april-9th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2016\/03\/18\/war-movies-worth-a-damn-april-9th\/","title":{"rendered":"War Movies Worth a Damn: April 9th"},"content":{"rendered":"

This movie can be watched on Solar Movie.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Another great WW2 Film about Denmark is Flame and Citron<\/a>\u00a0(Currently on Netflix and Solar Movie).\u00a0It goes on to show that although Denmark’s initial military resistance to the Nazi’s was not successful, the continued Guerilla Resistance through subversion, sabotage and assassinations were. -SF<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

https:\/\/youtu.be\/JfZVSB5piUI<\/a><\/p>\n

I had never heard of April 9th<\/em> until this week. The Danish-language film set during World War II came out last year and is fairly obscure. But it\u2019s one of the more well-crafted war movies I\u2019ve seen in the past few years.<\/p>\n

April 9th<\/em> takes place during the German invasion of Denmark in 1940. Within the context of World War II and its more than 60 million dead, the invasion \u2014 which lasted six hours \u2014 is a historical footnote. But that\u2019s partly what makes the film interesting.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The small scale and low budget means April 9th<\/em>\u00a0doesn\u2019t bother much with spectacle, of which American war films like Fury<\/em> are prone to do. Now, I liked Fury<\/em>, but this film is a\u00a0satisfying and tightly focused\u00a0change of pace.<\/div>\n

On April 9, 1940, Nazi Germany invaded Norway and Denmark\u00a0to prevent\u00a0Britain from threatening the Third Reich\u2019s iron ore supply, and also to use Norway\u2019s fjords as staging points for submarines.<\/p>\n

The Nazis invaded Denmark too, because\u00a0they\u00a0needed its airfields to shore up Norway from a British counter-attack, and to protect German shipping lanes. Eventually, the Nazis intended to incorporate Denmark\u00a0into a Greater Germanic Reich, which would have permanently ended its status as an independent nation.<\/p>\n

For the Germans, Denmark was a road bump along the way to a bigger prize, with the Danish army woefully unprepared to resist.\u00a0The country\u2019s\u00a0flat terrain also served to heighten the motorized German army\u2019s military\u00a0superiority.<\/p>\n

In every practical sense, Denmark lost the war before it\u00a0began.<\/p>\n

This might not sound like good movie material. Yet there are strong reasons to watch the film. To director Roni Ezra and writer Tobias Lindholm\u2019s credit, the story focuses strictly on a small group of soldiers and their experience in combat.<\/p>\n

More specifically, April 9th<\/em> shows us the war from the perspective of a poorly-equipped Danish bicycle platoon beginning a few hours before the invasion. The platoon\u2019s commander, 2nd Lt. Sand \u2014 played by Pilou Asb\u00e6k \u2014 is under enormous stress, and he\u2019s just as much a combat rookie as everyone else.<\/p>\n

The movie gets right to the point. The Danish General Staff knows war is imminent, and\u00a0the soldiers start out on a war footing but do not<\/em> deploy in defensive positions. The political leadership is wary of provoking a German invasion before it begins.\u00a0However, it\u2019s too late for politics to\u00a0do any good.<\/p>\n

By the next morning, the Nazis have crossed the border \u2026 and it\u2019s on.\u00a0What follows are a series of sudden\u00a0and violent skirmishes over several hours between the platoon and the advancing German army before the Danes surrender.<\/p>\n

April 9th<\/em> is a brief 93 minutes long and well paced. And the film doesn\u2019t tell us more than what the soldiers know, which during a motorized blitzkrieg and the loss of all communications, isn\u2019t much. The movie\u00a0shows<\/em>, not tells.<\/p>\n

I say the Danish soldiers are\u00a0poorly-equipped only in a relative sense, as it\u2019s easy to point to their bicycles and laugh. But it\u2019s difficult to see under what circumstances the Danes could have held out for very long by military means.<\/p>\n

The film is generally faithful to the actual events, and the soldiers are well trained and led. Their bicycles give them a fair amount of mobility, and an important military skill is knowing how to quickly replace their tires. The bikes are never played for laughs, yet they add a surreal element as the platoon cycles to meet a German column of\u00a0tanks and armored half-tracks.<\/p>\n

It\u2019d be false to call the Danish effort a \u201ctoken defense.\u201d The Danes are spirited, though their defense is short-lived considering the nature of what they\u2019re up against.\u00a0They are confused, scared and more or less cut off from the big picture, as you would be in the same situation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"In the opening clash at\u00a0Lundtoftbjerg hill in eastern Jutland, the platoon knocks out an armored car and kills several German soldiers. But the Germans\u2019\u00a0superior numbers and firepower proves overwhelming, pinning the Danes down.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Germans rush onto the flanks, a young Danish soldier is killed, and the rest flee, terrified.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Danish soldiers\u00a0fight, bleed and die to defend their country, and April 9th<\/em>\u2018s combat scenes are intense. The film has a Band of Brothers<\/em>-esque attention to \u2026 place. It\u2019s frenetic, but there\u2019s always a sense of where soldiers are in relation to each other and the enemy.<\/p>\n

Another point in the film\u2019s favor is that it eschews cinematic heroics. These are ordinary men living through events that happen to<\/em> them \u2014 of which\u00a0they\u2019re clearly unable to change the outcome. They can, at best, delay an inevitable defeat.<\/p>\n

World War II was a horrible machine that swept up millions of people like Sand and his soldiers. In such an environment, all you can really do is survive, and do your duty as best you can. Anything more would risk asking too much of people.<\/p>\n

April 9th<\/em> shows those soldiers fulfilling their duties with a great deal of courage.<\/p>\n

Read the Original Article at War is Boring<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This movie can be watched on Solar Movie. Another great WW2 Film about Denmark is Flame and Citron\u00a0(Currently on Netflix and Solar Movie).\u00a0It goes on to show that although Denmark’s initial military resistance to the Nazi’s was not successful, the continued Guerilla Resistance through subversion, sabotage and assassinations were. -SF I had never heard of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4029,5423,1899],"tags":[10373,10374,10375,2688,10376,3913],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13287"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13287"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67809,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13287\/revisions\/67809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}