One more time for the futility-of-war theme, but at least the issues of World War Two are clearer than those of Vietnam. In the snowbound forests of the Ardennes, a patrol of six young Americans (including Ethan Hawke and Kevin Dillon), holed up in December 1944 at a chateau filled with art treasures, encounters seven Germans who, after snowball fights and singsongs round the Christmas tree, just want to surrender. A fake skirmish is arranged (for no seemingly viable reason except dramatic effect). This being the moralising, ironic kind of film it is, it all goes inevitably and messily wrong. Decently acted and told, this would look better as an hour-long play on TV. None of the cast is exactly charismatic, but then that was perhaps what the director wanted.

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