Straight Into Darkness

Arty, surreal indie about wandering the Euro wasteland in the closing days of WW2

Sometime after the Battle of the Bulge in Western Europe, two lost American deserters journey the ruined landscape: Losey (Ryan Francis) is a sensitive man haunted by memories while Deming (Scott MacDonald) is a half-psycho brute. They are eventually forced to make a stand with a group of orphans and a skeptical French couple (David Warner & Linda Thorson).

Written & directed by Jeff Burr, "Straight into Darkness" (2004) is a low-budget indie, (financed mostly by Burr). You can tell this immediately in the opening credits, so I wasn’t sure if I wanted to keep watching, but I’m glad I did because the filmmaking is otherwise professional and the cast rose to the challenge.

The tone is melancholic and surreal. To get a good picture, imagine the arty style of “The Thin Red Line” (1998) and the setting of “When Trumpets Fade” (1998), but on a smaller budget, mixed with the plot of a few soldiers wandering the war-ridden landscape à la “Anzio” (1968) and “Saving Private Ryan” (1998).

Low budget indie or not, “Straight into Darkness” is deep, moody, brooding and memorable.

The film runs 1 hour, 35 minutes and took two years to make, shot in Romania; Mammoth Mountain, California; and Chattanooga, Tennessee.

GRADE: B