Netflix Warrior

I dove into the treasure chest that is Netflix last week and rented a pair of war movies I have never seen -- one turned out pretty good, the other was pretty lame.
"Overlord" was the stinker. It's clever in its design, but that's about it. The filmmakers merge new dramatic material in with WW 2-vintage archival footage. Th merger is near seamless. Technically, the film was interesting. However, the story was dreary. A young British man is called up to serve just before D-Day. He goes through army training, meets a morbid girl, becomes determined that he is going to die and then heads off to Normandy to whup Hitler. That's pretty much it and "it" is dully enacted.
I tracked down the Italian film "El Alamein" after reading a couple of books about the war in North Africa. "El Alamein" follows the grim adventures of a unit of Italian infantrymen dug in and awaiting a big British counteroffensive.
While there are some historical errors, overall the movie does a good job of conveying the psychological and physical state of the under supplied and under equippped Italians.
Often the I-tis are just bashed as cowardly and worthless troops -- an image perpetuated by their German allies -- when in fact many Italian troops performed very well despite inadequate firepower and supplies.
"El Alamein" is grim and fairly predictable, but definitely worth viewing if you're a war movie fan.