All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front

Paul Baumer and his friends Albert and Muller, egged on by romantic dreams of heroism, voluntarily enlist in the German army. Full of excitement and patriotic fervour, the boys enthusiastically march into a war they believe in. But once on the Western Front, they discover the soul-destroying horror of World War I.

  • Released: 2022-10-07
  • Runtime: 147 minutes
  • Genre: Action, Drama, War
  • Stars: Felix Kammerer, Albrecht Schuch, Aaron Hilmer, Edin Hasanović, Devid Striesow, Daniel Brühl, Moritz Klaus, Sebastian Hülk, Anton von Lucke, Michael Wittenborn, Luc Feit, Andreas Döhler, André Marcon, Tobias Langhoff, Adrian Grünewald, Thibault de Montalembert, Nico Ehrenteit, Wolf Danny Homann, Charles Morillon, Jakob Schmidt, Peter Sikorski, Sascha Nathan, Alexander Schuster, Michael Stange, Joe Weintraub, Daniel Kamen, Markus Tomczyk, Dominikus Weileder, Michael Pitthan
  • Director: Edward Berger
 Comments
  • ivobg - 25 May 2024
    Something was missing....
    I was expecting to watch something like "1917", and at some point at the beginning it really reminded me of that one.....

    The camera work was similar and the whole frontline trenches scenes were very similar.

    In general I've had a high expectations, but it failed to impress me. There was something missing in the whole thing... I'm not sure what, but it looked like there's no atmosphere on the filming set.

    The soundtrack was weird and even annoying at moments. Otherwise the battle scenes were not bad, it showed us a good perspective of WWI.

    It was hard to watch it tho, I felt bored and wanted to stop it, but was curious to see how will it end.
  • wilmandj - 1 March 2024
    I feel numb
    I know my mind is numb from the impossibility to find meaning in the senseless suffering which is depicted here. The pure crazy idiocy of nationalistic pride seen equally in the aggressor in his purile willingness to sacrifice human life, as in the victor in his vengeance. The eye of the German creators on this topic can be refreshingly frank and lacking the self aggrandizing audience, pleaser tactics coming from nations for whom war is still seen through the obscuring lens of the victors.

    I recommend this film to those not seeking entertainment, but education. It is a journey with no happy end.
  • Windermere2 - 7 January 2024
    I wanted to like it, but....
    I wanted to like this movie since "All Quiet On The Western Front" is one of my favorite piece of literature and I had seen the 1930 and it's 1979 remake, which I both enjoyed. However, the disappointment is that I came in watching the 2022 version with the assumption that it was a remake, when in fact it is an homage.

    But first, I do have to say that the movie does a good job at pulling no punches at depicting the horrors and difficulties of trench warfare, which is an important part of the original story. That being said, because it is an homage, it takes certain liberties that distracted me. For one, the fast pacing does not fit with the original where Paul gradually changes from the optimistic teenager to one of hopelessness. In this version, it essentially takes place in the last week of the war and it seems that too much is happening before an armistice is signed.
  • msucalvin - 8 January 2023
    Meh
    Visually it's a good film. The ground and setting you can almost smell it. Not much character building and that sucks cause it's 2.5 hrs of boredom and repetitiveness and flashbacks to the same part of the battle . Which ironically is a lot of combat but I don't want to see boredom in a movie just for the sake of reality. The book is better. Depicts war and irony well but just not well put together. Soundtrack sucks and is outta place at a lot of areas, like almost too modern. So overall not worth the hype. The 1960/ version was better in its own ways. I would never watch this one again, pick something else.
  • craigskin - 5 January 2023
    Over hyped
    This movie had been hyped out of all proportion. An average war movie with some moving parts that were predictable. Not in the same league as Dunkirk, Hacksaw Ridge, 1917 or Saving Private Ryan. The film is an hour too long and it's difficult to work out what is happening in the beginning, if like us you haven't seen any of the previous films nor read the book. The story is quite disjointed and feels like the main point of the film is to highlight the obvious frivolity of human life in WW1. Despite not knowing the plot most of the scenes we were able to guess what was going to happen. Some good cinematic wide shots of trench warfare.
  • The_Beneld - 1 January 2023
    Efficte anti-war movie but historical inaccuracies bother me
    The newest adaptation of one of the most important pieces of anti-war literature is a really good movie, despite numerous deviations from the source material.

    It avoids many of the typical pitfalls of WWI-movies. Like in the book the story is told from the German perspective and neither side is dehumanized or vilified, as it sometimes happened in movies like this. At its core it is a very human story, about normal humans on either side who are rolled over by the machinery of an inhumane and senseless war. Thankfully there is also no heroism depicted, so there is absolutely no danger of coming out of this thinking that war is ,cool'. Instead it shows several human tragedies in the last days of the war, while peace negotiations are already going on, making them even more avoidable.

    The contrast of the troops, fighting and dying in the dirt and the higher ups who are still living in luxury, negotiating and wasting time with disregard for their dying man was very well done.

    Generally the movie gets the gist of trench warfare with a very oppressive atmosphere. I am bothered by two things tho.

    First: When the protagonists are getting called up to war in 1917 they are really excited about that and I doubt that this is realistic so late into the war. Even the best propaganda could not have hidden the fact that the war had been going on for three years without noticeable gains on the Western front for almost as long. Young conscripts may have been determined to do their duty but I simply cannot imagine them being totally enthusiastic, after everyone had already lost loved ones in the war.

    Second: In the time between the signing of the armistice and the time it went into effect, the Germans launch a great attack. In reality the Germans were in no position to go onto the offensive anymore, that is unrealistic. In fact it were the allies who launched those dead-rubber-attacks.

    This doesn't destroy the movie but I don't get why they made those decisions because people are going to believe it. In general tho the movie gets its anti-war message across without becoming overly preachy, by showing the horrors of the war machinery. Even tho it could have been shortened a bit in the middle part.

    On an unrelated note: The German General in the movie looks like Dr. Eggman from Sonic. Obviously this does not affect my rating at all but it didn't help me taking him seriously.
  • Android - 27 December 2022
    For people who don't know history, or cinema.
    The factoids (that anyone with an education should know) at the end say it all: this is a movie made for people who know nothing about ww1. Or perhaps even seen a real war film.

    Apocalypse now, come and see, deer hunter, platoon, full metal jacket..masterwork films that explore war and human nature in an artful, unique and compelling ways.

    AQOTWF 2022 is not one of those films.

    This is a thoroughly conventional movie. It pulls its graphic punches in a way that say, hacksaw ridge, does not. It's anachronistic "synthesized tuba" riff feels like a rip off of nolan/zimmer. 1917 wasn't a great film and i'd put this below it.

    It's a good looking film. But it's Unrealistic, stagey, melodramatic. Trying far too hard to be deep and compelling. It all feels phony and artificial.

    There's nothing here, absolutely nothing, that hasn't been done before and far, far better.
  • xiaoli7377 - 23 December 2022
    Lacks Something
    The 2022 adaptation of "All Quiet on the Western Front" is in some ways the best version of the story on film. Obviously modern technology makes for a very visceral and immersive experience in the trenches. I also liked the addition of the Armistice meetings. Maybe not their inclusion in this particular film, but at least their execution if I were to watch them as separate clips on YouTube. Because their inclusion in this narrative kind of gets in the way of the intent of the "Western Front" story, which is to provide you with the point of view of the common soldier. The politics higher up on the food chain honestly don't really matter. The great thing about the 1930 film is that you can swap out the World War I set dressing around the film for any other conflict in history and the message is retained, which I'm not so sure I can say about this film.

    Also, sadly, gone are the scenes where the troops meet the French women near the river and the scene where Paul (played in this film by Felix Kammerer) goes home and is completely disconnected with what his former life was back on the home front. Those were two of my favorite scenes from the original film and added so much to the depiction of a soldier's life during World War I.

    I don't think the characters are nearly as well developed in this film either. In the 1930 version, I felt like each of them had a distinct personality. Here, there was nothing that I think really got me emotionally connected with any of them. The iconic ending of the original adaptation (while admittedly not faithful to the book) is gone and that kind of sucks because that's one of the most famous ending scenes in movie history.

    I guess it's right that this adaptation should try for different things. I've never read the novel myself so perhaps this one is more accurate to the novel? But I honestly wouldn't care anyways, because if so then they made a way better movie in 1930 by changing it up a little bit. Sometimes things that are "faithful" don't always make for a better film adaptation.

    I think this movie kind of misses the point of the story because it's supposed to be about the sheer pointlessness and absurdity of war, and the alienation of soldiers when they try to adapt back into the civilian lifestyle. I'm not as interested in them telling the politics of what's going on between the French and German generals at the Armistice meetings.

    Great action scenes, visceral depiction of combat, great acting, great cinematography. If you want to watch one of the most beautiful (and also horrifying) movies of this year, this is up there. It just lacks a certain essence of storytelling that I was very disappointed in.
  • gershu_ar - 17 December 2022
    The Meat Mincer
    European cinema has come A LONG way in these few years, and they have a story to tell. Anecdotes and books are the same, the way they're told it's what makes the difference. American cinema needs a hero, this movie all it needs it's an audience.

    I can't feel there is some Tarantino influence in it, the photography, the well placed, tragic comedy scores. The meat mincer World War I was. Silly pride, useless military tactics, and the industrial world at the service of the death business. 20 million people died in World War I. 20 million more were injured.

    "Im Westen nichts Neues" is brilliantly filmed, with an amazing photography, acting performances, costumes, props, guns, sounds of a war that was supposed to end all wars... but it didn't.
  • jeromesgabilo - 12 December 2022
    A BIT BLEAK
    In my honest opinion it's a well-made war film. The actors portrayed their roles effectively. The theme was maximized with its 2 1/2 hour runtime. The only problem I had was that I was almost bored. Although I enjoyed the haunting score and brilliant sound design, I did not actually connect with the rest of the film. It was a bit bleak and despite all the action and gory scenes, it seemed uneventful because the story was too restricted with a single important historical event, something that was told too many times. Because of that it was almost predictable. But I think this one was Germany's best contender for The Oscars.