Capitaine Conan

As beautiful as it is brutal, Bernard Tavernier's sprawling World War I saga is easily one of the best war films of recent years. The year is 1918, the place the Balkan front: In an era of increasingly mechanized warfare, battle-bred French commander Conan (Philippe Torreton) and his troops continue to fight as warriors, battering their opponents with all the savagery and terror of hand-to-hand combat while contemptuously flouting orders from the superiors they consider mere "soldiers." On the battlefield they're hailed as heroes, but once armistice is declared and Conan and his band of marauders are let loose on the streets of Bucharest, it's an entirely different...