Last night to avoid the snorefest of the Freo/Doggies game l turned over at half-time to SBS and watched Recon, 2019 95 min 8 / 10.
This is a WW2 drama, set in winter in northern Italy. The colour palette throughout is based mainly on various shades of blue and white which becomes more oppressive by design as the movie develops. The cast is small, only a couple of dozen characters at most and the only actor l recognized was Franco Nero, who plays an elderly peasant who gets pressed by a small American patrol into being a guide as they search for German positions high in the mountains.
The soldiers on patrol are still reeling from a brutal execution style killing of a woman civilian, by another soldier. As they ascend a mountain they are met with a series of incidents which tests their resolve and commitment to continue on. The movie then becomes as much a treatise on the nature of war and even existentialism, as it is about anything else. The movie also mixes in an element of mystery and palpable tension as the patrol finds evidence of a sniper who then begins hunting them.