STREAMING: The Liberator (2020)

 

                    “The Liberator” is the new animated series appearing on Netflix.  It is based on the popular nonfiction book The Liberator:  One World War II Soldier’s 500 Day Odyssey by Alex Kershaw.  The story was adapted by Jeb Stuart and uses a technique called Trioscope Enhanced Hybrid Animation.   This blends live action actors with CGI animation.  The movie focuses on Felix Sparks (Bradley James), who started as a lieutenant and ended up as a lieutenant colonel after those 500 days in combat.  He was in the 45^th Infantry Division, which had been part of the Oklahoma National Guard before the war.  The unit was known as The Thunderbirds and was noted for its mixture of minorities like Mexican-Americans, Native Americans, and cowboys.  A supposed theme was overcoming the enemy while facing discrimination from its own country. 

                    Sparks joins the 157^th Infantry Regiment at Fort Sills and is put in charge of the soldiers in the camp jail.  In a nod to “The Dirty Dozen”, he molds his malcontents into a fighting force.  Then its off to Salerno for the Italian campaign.  Sparks gets a “million dollar wound”, but he goes AWOL and rejoins his men.  From here he can do no wrong as far as his men are concerned and he actually does no wrong as he is an exemplary leader.  He is also a survivor, unlike most of his men.  The unit fights at Anzio and holds back a German attack at Via Anziate.  Then its off to Southern France for Operation Dragoon and the “Champagne Campaign”.  Eventually, they reach Germany where they are tasked with taking the city of Aschaffenburg.  The miniseries closes with the liberation of Dachau and Sparks’ subsequent trial for a war crime. 

                    I was excited when I first heard about this series and intrigued by the fact that it was going to be animated.  I am a war movie lover and I have seen every type of war film.  When you have reviewed as many as I have, different stands out and is welcomed.  Unless it is an Indian Bollywood production.  This is not the first animation of a war story.  Animation has its place in the genre.  I have high hopes for the future of war movies, partly because I can see a role for animation.  After all, you don’t need an authentic Tiger tank if the tank is animated.  CGI may be the wave of the future and it is improving, but animation can do some things better.  Humans, for instance.  And it can be more creative.  Unfortunately, “The Liberator” will not be looked at as a landmark in the development of war animation. 

                    The main problem pops up right from the start.  Animation should be disarming, not distracting.  At its best, like in “Waltz with Bashir”, it can be mesmerizing.  Or it can be nostalgic, like in  “Chicken Run”.  Or it can have an anime style, like “Grave of the Fireflies”.  None of those movies had me asking “why did the animator do that?”  Throughout “The Liberator”, I could not figure out why the uniforms had white lines on them, for instance.  It is hard to explain if you haven’t seen it and perhaps it won’t bother others, but it bugged the hell out of me.  Why this quirk?!  If not for that, the animation is pretty cool.  It does manage to convey the wooden performances of the actors.  It’s a no name cast and you can blame Stuart for the lame plot, and maybe the producers for not having the funds to literally flesh out the characters.  Although four episodes of 45 minutes each, the series was substantially cut in length.  Character development might have ended up on the cutting room floor.

                    Another problem is the length.  Apparently, the series was half the length originally planned.  This would explain a lot.  There are big holes in the chronology and baffling plot developments.  The series starts off as a small unit movie of the motley crew variety and we are introduced to a heterogeneous group of misfits, but they are mostly gone by the midway mark. In some ways the last two episodes are not connected to the first two except for the character arc of Sparks.  A new group is introduced in the third installment and the squad is mostly whites.  So much for the central theme of a minority-based unit!  In a move that is evidence for my theory that the series was substantially altered by cuts, Sparks ends episode two alluding to a breakdown, but there is no evidence of this in the second half.  The series also introduces potentially interesting German foes and then drops them.  The series has the feel of missing pieces.  Although the unit first fought on Sicily and later fought in the Battle of the Bulge, neither of these is covered.  Battles come to abrupt ends for no apparent reason.  For a 3 hour show, it does not have a lot of combat and what there is shows no pizzazz.  Blood sprays are common, but the animation is not used to make the action visceral.

                    For the average viewer who is looking for a short binge watch on Netflix and is into animation, “The Liberator” might be a nice time-filler.  It is sufficiently accurate about the war and tells a true story of a man who was certainly a hero.  For war movie fans, it is a dud. It’s not just the animation that is distracting.  The series has moments that are insulting.  For example, these soldiers dig the largest two-man foxholes you will ever see.  One of the purposes of a foxhole is to protect you from bombardment.  Not these. It does not take a lucky shot to land a shell in one.  And speaking of bombardment, whoever was in charge of animating the shells has them looking like rockets with flat trajectories and smoke trails.  And yet, there is an awesome rendering of a tree burst.  Hence, the quandary. If animation can do that, why can’t it make a battalion look like a battalion?  I would think extras would not be a problem for animation.  If we can get the vehicles, weapons, and equipment accurately rendered, shouldn’t we expect epic battle scale?

                    In conclusion, without the juice of animation, the series would be just a WWII B-movie.  It succeeds in bringing recognition to the Liberator (Sparks), but not to the Liberators (the Thunderbirds).  In fact, it closes with a war crime by the unit that negates its liberation of Dachau.  This was a strange choice for a series that glosses over the hardships (other than on the battlefield) the division went through.  Could someone now concentrate on using animation to do projects like the St. Nazaire Raid, instead of retreads of old school WWII movies?

GRADE  =  C