The Assault (1986)
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The Assault Movie Review
The Assault is a 1986 Dutch historical drama film directed by Fons Rademakers. It won an Oscar, but is in my opinion quite weak and typical.
I found the storyline rather typical for this type of movie. It follows one boy’s terrible experiences during World War II and later we witness his struggles as he cannot forget those horrors as an adult.
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Admittedly, the second half of that premise sounds great, but the execution of it is so weak that the film actually ended up being better in the first than in the second half as it’s much more memorable at first and later it becomes rather slow and dull while rushing the personal drama way too much.
This is one of those historical/biopic films which have that epic structure of lasting many years and decades and I do not like such an approach. That meant that the editing is bad as sometimes the film is rushed and at other times it’s prolonged and slow. The structure is familiar, annoying and the film should have focused on just one of those two periods and it would have been much better that way.
The Assault is weakly directed by Fons Rademakers as it isn’t epic or intimate enough as it fails on both of those fronts. It does have its emotional and dark moments, but ultimately it’s overly ambitious for its own sake. And simply way too long at over 140 minutes.
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It’s also well acted across the board with everyone delivering a strong performance. However, the characters are so weakly developed that I didn’t care for either of them. They were just so bland and uninspired.
The film looks good and its ambition is respectable, albeit it was ultimately out of the filmmakers’ grasp. It’s also solidly scored. So it won an Oscar for foreign film and it’s one of the weaker winners. It isn’t a mediocre film like some other 80s winners such as ‘Begin the Beguine’, but it’s ultimately not worthy of the award as it’s just passable and never anything more than that. It’s also obviously an Oscar bait and a successful one in the end.
The Assault definitely has its moving moments, it’s well made, acted and ambitious, but ultimately overly ambitious for its own sake, way too rushed at times, but also sometimes prolonged with an overlong runtime. It needed better characterization and its structure is problematic.
