For those of you unfamiliar with the Saints and Soldiers trilogy, these are low budget WW2 movies, set on the Western Front, the first was in late 1944, during The Battle of The Bulge, the second was set in the South of France during Operation Anvil and the 3rd, this one is set in 1945 in Germany and the plot isn't that much different from the bigger budgeted 'Fury' - A group of two American Hellcat Tank Destroyers are to scout an area known as 'The Void' (I can't find any reference to this area in history, but here the context is that its Indian country) meanwhile a group of troopers being transported by the Redball Express, driven by none other than Jesse Owens himself is ambushed by a squadron of dated German Mark III Panzers, an English Agent is in the group who make their escape - soon the Hellcats arrive and its a question of who can outsmart who in the skirmish that follows.

If you look through my other reviews you will see I like all kinds of movies but I am something of a WW2 buff and its always interesting to see these films, clearly made with love and care. Little here tries to put as much as he can in every shot to increase Production Value and it extra shots have been added to make the place feel more like Germany / Austria and less like Utah where it was filmed. For the most part this works, along with a heavy de- saturation of color in the edit suite, making you feel like the film is almost black and white and giving it the appropriate vintage feel. I recently also reviewed Allies and its easy to compare these two films, probably both having similar budgets and using resources from Tank Collectors and re-inactors. Allies is probably the superior of the two movies, but SAS - The Void is not without its great moments of action and tension. Some of the actors are good too but sadly this makes the weaker performances stand out all the more and these aren't helped by some very over stated dialogue. Little needs to team up with a good writer next time but also trust in his best actors to deliver more emotion with less words on some key scenes. Here and there dialogue is forced to explain things too much, but never the less what you have here is actually a great little film. Its well researched and feels bigger than it actually is, there is nice sense of scale and battle in the climax. Its biggest flaw is that its very hard to make a film shot in the States actually feel like Europe unless you can drop in some blue screen shots of European Towns or Villages (or Alternatively build one as they did in Fury) still with the obvious restraints of budget you have to commend Little's effort because it tries really hard with every shot to make the location feel European.

I think this is a great film, with good attention to detail that is let down by some aspects that were clearly beyond the control or means of the production financially but with stronger writing it could have been a stronger film still. Worth watching and I look forward to Little's next film War Pigs, which has some big names in the cast - he has earned his shot to make a bigger movie, that is for sure.

Boredom warning: this is a cheap and boring B-movie, with lots of close ups of really bland C-listed actors, who normally only star in cheap tv-commercials or as extras on a background set.

NO thrilling action whatsoever. REally none to speak of. Again, incredibly boring.

More bad: then there are the ridiculous English "German" accents. And to top it all of the story by itself is ridiculous as well and mind you this is not meant to be a comedy!

Jesse Owens as a black tanker in 1945? Oh, please. That relegates this from an historical movie to an execrably written revisionist fantasy piece, burdened by uniformly dreadful acting and pretty dire TV production values. Yes, the 827th did exist, and had the dreadful discipline problems shown here, but Owens was nowhere near it.

The movie is bombastically heavy handed on race relations, and based on risible lies, from Owen's ridiculous presence to begin with, to a clumsy and false story about his father being a war hero rather than a farmer and steel worker. The only logical conclusion is that the Owens shown in this movie is not Jesse Owens the athlete, but a lying fantasist grifting off of his name. How else can you explain it?

Cinematically, it's poor. They do the best they can with the small budget that they have, but good luck seeing any ejecting brass. There's even a scene where brass and links from an M2 are showing falling into... I don't know, the floor of the tank? The ammo box? when it's painfully obvious that it's not actually firing, and the poor actor is just shaking it for all he's worth.

The HD filming also really highlights the flaws - or rather, the lack of flaws - in the vehicles and uniforms, right down to completely scuff and scratch free goggles. Clearly all fresh off the shelf, or rentals that had to be returned in pristine condition. In some particularly bizarre scenes they even highlight this, featuring the soles of boots that have clearly never touched the ground, or a tanker complaining about sleeping in his mint condition uniform, sporting freshly pressed creases.

Continuity is poor, with facial hair appearing and disappearing in the middle of scenes, and firefights where dozens of rounds are fired into a room with a full sized window backdrop without a single pane of glass being hit.

Yes, it's got M18s, but the budget only stretches to a few mobile scenes and some fairly shoddy effects, or even lack of effects for the first M18 shot.

The research and period detail are decent enough, but there are some curious foibles like, uh, "Jesse" manually working the extractor on an M1 carbine (and the only brass to be seen in the movie ejects), then in the very next shot demonstrating that it's semi automatic. Why? One particularly jarring anachronism is the insistence of most of the cast of demonstrating modern finger-along-receiver trigger discipline, which is great until you remember that it was never done in period.

If you're interested in history then you'll be infuriated by the dreadful shoehorning of Owens into the narrative plus the constant flaws, and if you're not interested in history then there's very little reason to watch this.