Resistance review: 'What if' Nazi movie that is entirely resistible

By Chris Tookey

Last updated at 8:41 AM on 25th November 2011

Resistance (PG)

Verdict: Resistible

Rating:

There have been several ‘what if’ movies about what Britain might have been like had the Nazis occupied us. This is one of the worst.

It’s a sluggish love story about a Welsh farmer’s wife (an underpowered Andrea Riseborough) who discovers in 1944 that her husband has left, presumably to join the anti-Nazi resistance along with most other men of the valley, leaving the women to cope with a German patrol under the leadership of a polite, English-speaking captain (Tom Wlaschiha).

Sluggish love story: A farmer's wife discovers that her husband has left, presumably to join the anti-Nazi resistance

Bit part: The trailer implies Michael Sheen has a starring role in the film, but he makes a cameo appearance

The only star name, Michael Sheen, has a cameo role, though — naughtily — the trailer implies he’s a lead.

Amit Gupta’s flaccid direction leaves plenty of pauses to be filled by actors gazing opaquely into space.

The script, by Gupta and Owen Sheers, based on the latter’s novel, leaves so much unspoken it never begins to work as a cross-cultural love story or tackles its theme of how far collaboration can ever be justified.

All in all, it’s too minor and dull to be worth screening in a cinema.

Too much left unspoken: The film is too minor and to dull to be worth screening in a cinema