A Midnight Clear

NTSC/Region 0. Director Keith Gordon based his excellent script for "A Midnight Clear" on the book by William Wharton, who had been seriously wounded in the Battle of the Bulge towards the end of WWII. He wrote of an American Intelligence team which came upon a team of young German soldiers, desperate to surrender to the Americans, in order to survive Germany's last offensive. He wrote of fear and suspicion, pain and loss, friendship and hope and a snow-ball fight. And of the agreement to save the lives of the Germans, which went horribly wrong. A haunting, disturbing war movie without much war, looking tenderly at those who go to kill and be killed, and gently painting a truth: There are no real victors; all are wounded by war's inherent, random cruelty. DVD info.: A special slip-case presentation imported from S. Korea, with Dolby 5.1 sound doing justice to Mark Isham's beautiful score, the movie is in the original English, with optional English and Korean subtitles, with the original 107 minutes.