With the exception of the title and character names, it bears very little resemblance to its well-known source, Remarque's novel.
Characters and significant portions are absent. The teacher glorifying fighting for the Fatherland and the confrontation with said teacher later in the story. Basic training and Himmelstoss. The story suffers because they are missing.
Remarque had numerous goals in mind. Convey the experience of him and his fellow soldiers during the war. Critique both German society before and during the war in his story. Human nature is examined philosophically. The majority of those are absent.
Things that are not in the book are presented to us, like a tank attack. Music that is inappropriate. And let's not even begin to discuss the sound that indicates a tense situation: "TAH TAH TAAAAAAAAAM!" It actually destroys the anticipation and quickly becomes very unpleasant.
Then there comes the conclusion, which deviates from the original. Furthermore, it left me with a foul taste in my mouth. The most significant aspect of the story is the original ending. Even the title makes a hint about it. Everything hinges on that conclusion. But they rejected it because of a poorly thought-out finale that renders it meaningless.
Nothing positive to say? Well the battle scenes are very accurate, gruesomely well done.
On the whole this is a generic war movie set in world war 1, that appropriated its title from a brilliant novel. Brilliance it never gets near. Instead, watch the 1930 original film and 1979 version for an accurate portrayal of the novel.
