Mark Reviews Movies: FOXHOLE

Foxhole, Samuel Goldwyn Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 12, 2022

Writer/director, as well as composer and editor, Jack Fessenden tells three separate stories within three different wars in Foxhole. All of them feature characters with the same names, played by the same actors (save for one notable exception), and they also are all are about various levels of uncertainty—from strategic matters, such as where soldiers should be positioned or when and from where the enemy will be approaching, to moral ones, such as whether or not one life is worth the price of others.

The young filmmaker, both in terms of age (He's barely out of high school) and experience (This is his second feature), shows certain degrees of maturity and wisdom here. These stories are, on their face and between the lines, about fatalism. Two of the tales come to an end just before what seems to be an inevitable conclusion, and we might as well imagine that all of each characters come from the different generations of the same families. Destiny is both on the battlefield, as three groups of soldiers find themselves in a position of being surrounded by imminently arriving or currently present foes, and in the blood, if we do take these characters to be related to each other in some way.

That each story either doesn't have a clear resolution or does have a decidedly, if inglorious, one displays a cold sense of realism, as well. The other part of the movie's realistic depiction here is how much of these stories takes place before battle, as the soldiers talk about little of tactical importance and do even less fighting. They're here to do a job, complete a given task, and hope that it'll be enough to get them home to family and other loved ones. In each segment, Fessenden establishes a rhythm and atmosphere of the mundane, which reminds us of that old observation of war: long stretches of boredom followed by quick moments of sheer terror.

The core idea and basic structure of Fessenden's screenplay are sound and clearly have a point—at least in terms of tone. It's a big idea, and it's bigger, perhaps, than even the filmmaker comprehends or can put in action. We easily can admire Fessenden's creation of this material and his general approach toward it, but in the end, the movie feels like a lot of gimmickry, plenty of showiness, and a bit of skill that amounts to little except the obvious.

The three conflicts are the American Civil War, the Great War, and modern-day Iraq. The main participants are five soldiers in each period: Clark (Cody Kostro), Conrad (Angus O'Brien), Wilson (James Le Gros), Jackson (Motell Gyn Foster), and Morton (Alex Hurt), who is replaced in the contemporary section by Gale (Andi Matichak), whose own name is shared by the Civil War-era Morton's wife.

During that conflict, Morton is heading a unit digging trenches for a forthcoming battle. Jackson, a Black soldier who has been separated from his own unit, stumbles upon the team after being wounded in combat. The plan is to get him out of the foxhole and to a local field hospital, but when Jackson informs the team that Confederate soldiers will reach their position in a few hours, Clark's initial hesitation toward and distrust of the stranger becomes stronger.

Clark is also an unsympathetic man in the Great War story (shot in black-and-white, by the way), when his unit, again led by Morton and ordered to lay down barbed wire in no man's land, comes across a German soldier (Alex Breaux). Both Morton and Clark are certain that they need to kill this foe on the spot, in case he's a spy and before he might give away their job and position. Wilson, who comes across as a moral authority in each of the stories, makes the case against executing an unarmed man, and Jackson, who—unlike his forebear several decades ago—is allowed in this particular unit and isn't allowed to carry a rifle, suspects the German might be on their side.

In the most current story, Jackson is now in charge of a team (the slow but steady and inevitable—one can hope—move toward progress), traveling across the desert and separated from their convoy. When they hit a hidden explosive along the way, the five have to wait for help or fight their way to safety.

Only that third section possesses a clear-cut conclusion, which makes the other tales more frustrating (particularly the World War I segment, which ends just at the height of the moral debate and on a cliffhanger) and the whole schematic of the narrative feel a bit disingenuous. As a director, Fessenden shows some talent, especially in how he uses these limited and tight locales—the hole surrounded by fog, the artillery-ruined field drenched in darkness, the inside of the truck with windows obscured by blinding sunlight or caked with mud—for suspense and a feeling of known but invisible threat.

As a storyteller, though, the filmmaker stops short in Foxhole. The movie's concept is fascinating, but its individual tales and existence as a whole don't add up to much.

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