The Founding of an Army (2017)

The Founding of an Army plays like a full-throttle historical blockbuster, taking a nation-shaping chapter and staging it with the kind of scale and polish you’d expect from a modern action tentpole. Its battles are the main event: sharply choreographed, propulsively edited, and bolstered by impressive CGI that turns set pieces into genuine spectacle rather than dutiful reenactment. There’s also a glossy, star-powered energy aimed at younger audiences, giving the film a punchy momentum even when the history gets dense. It is, unmistakably, a commemorative and patriotic work—so if you’re allergic to propaganda framing, you’ll feel it—but if you want a big-screen war epic with crowd-pleasing action craft, it delivers.

The Founding of an Army is clearly aiming to be a big, patriotic anniversary spectacle—part history lesson, part war-pageant—designed to honor an institution rather than interrogate it. The problem is it often plays like a string of set pieces stitched together by loud slogans, with characters serving the message more than feeling like people you can actually care about. If you’re hoping for nuanced politics, human-scale tragedy, or the messy ambiguity that makes great war films hit hard, this can come off tone-deaf and oddly hollow. That said, if you’re specifically interested in an official, state-commissioned retelling with a polished, star-studded presentation and straightforward heroics, it may deliver exactly what it’s trying to do.