Before Dawn

by Mike McGranaghan

Before Dawn is one of the most inert war movies I’ve seen in a long time. Watching it is almost disorienting because you keep waiting to feel suspense, fear, excitement, or anything, really. You never quite do. The film is certainly earnest. It has competent performances and respectable production values. What it lacks is a soul. The best war movies put you right there on the battlefield, a feat this one fails to accomplish.

Jim Collins (Levi Miller) lives and works on his family’s Australian sheep farm. Against his father’s wishes, he enlists during what he believes are the final days of WWI, hoping to help bring about victory. Instead, he spends a couple years hiding in muddy trenches and watching his fellow soldiers die. Jim is a big believer in the “no man left behind” ideal, so he’s constantly putting himself in even more danger by nobly trying to get wounded men to safety.

Director/co-writer Jordon Prince-Wright isn’t even 25 years old. He made Before Dawn a couple years ago. That helps explain why the picture is oddly lifeless. It feels like the work of someone who has watched a lot of movies about war but doesn’t really know much about the subject. The story is relentlessly old-fashioned, relying on cliches dating back to the ‘30s and ‘40s, from the do-gooder hero to the solider who just wants to get home so he can marry that girlfriend of his. What we don’t get is any actual perspective on combat. All the technical pizazz doesn’t fill the void at the center, which is that Collins’ main reaction to being part of WWI is “Wow, this is bad!”

Everything that happens is on a surface level, with no depth. For example, Collins’ dad wants him to stay and work on the farm. The young man protests, saying he wants to be part of something bigger in life. That’s as far as it goes. No effort is made to genuinely explore their relationship – much less their conflict - in detail. Similarly, the characters are non-descript, which makes the interpersonal drama between them flat. Many war movies create a sense of camaraderie between the soldiers that’s emotional to watch. Because the characters are so bland, that doesn’t even work this time. I honestly had trouble telling a lot of the men apart, given that there’s so little to distinguish them.

The pace is lethargic, too. Shootouts, explosions, and ambushes take place regularly yet generate little in the way of thrills. Audiences have gotten used to war films that create a you-are-there immediacy. From Saving Private Ryan to Dunkirk to 1917, war cinema has become stylish and visceral, leaving you feeling like your guts have been ripped out by the end. Before Dawn pales in comparison to them. It’s “fine” in an era where you can have “amazing,” “spectacular,” and “devastating.”

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