The Long Day's Dying

A clumsy adaptation of Alan White's fine novel about four lost soldiers - three British paratroopers and a German who becomes their prisoner - wandering around a World War II battlefield in Europe which becomes a private hell. The novel's rather interesting argument, that a highly trained soldier can revel in his skill as a killer and yet remain a pacifist, gets lost in hysterical overstatement, much camera trickery, insistent soft-focus photography, and a script by Charles Wood which is unwisely cast as a poetic stream-of-consciousness monologue. Excellent performances, though, especially from Tom Bell.