Movie Review: Echoes of War (2015)
Since the dawn of the movie industry, there has been a pattern in which the motion pictures with the best cinematography are often the dullest movies. One such recent movie was the 2015 feature Echoes of War about the aftermath of the Civil War in Texas. Sitting through the entirety of this movie is quite a chore due to its dullness. Neither the screenplay or the acting was anything other than mediocre. The best way to describe this movie is as the ultimate in slow burn drama with very little excitement at the end. There is neither tension or drama in this flick. The pacing is sluggish. The lack of action fails to draw in the viewer.
Basically, this is a movie about Civil War veterans returning home only to struggle in a relatively peaceful environment even though they are all emotionally scarred from their experiences in the war. It is about two families, one of which has lost everything due to confiscations by the Confederate Army while the other, that of a cattle baron, is high living and looks down on its neighbors. This should have been the setup for an interesting movie, but the filmmakers were incapable of moving past sheer tedium.
One wonders if the film creators were aiming at showing how soldiers suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) have a hard time adjusting to life post-war. If so, they spent so much time and energy focusing on establishing mood that they seemed to forget crafting much of a plot. To be sure, this movie does have nice music and some of the technical aspects, such as the sound, were very well done. This movie did win the Special Jury Award for Ensemble Performance at the Dallas Film Festival, however, its competition was limited to other low budget “independent” Westerns.
This is a movie that aimed for a realistic depiction of life and death on the frontier in 1865 Texas. Basically, this is an attempt at creating an art house slice of life motion picture. This was a worthy objective, however it was done in such a way that turned out to be both banal and boring beyond belief. If you really want to watch this flick, then you are advised to drink plenty of beverages that are high in caffeine before watching it.
This is a muddled Western about post-war domestic strife. The plot should have led to far more excitement and action than what the actual movie showed. The musical score does not fit this movie well and was actually distracting at times. All too often, this movie was predictable. The acting was poor, the screenplay was poor and the direction was poor as well. You could tell that the actors were hamstrung by their one-dimensional roles and were unable to elevate the material which doggedly follows an all too familiar path in relentlessly dull fashion. This despite the fact that the movie featured such proven actors as James Badge Dale, Ethan Embry and William Forsythe. In the end Echoes of War is an abortion and as such it ought to be avoided.