Those of you who clicked on this review thinking it's going to be a film about the influential Manchester band or the life and death of Ian Curtis will be sadly disappointed. Those who thought it actually concerned the use of Jewish women as prostitutes in concentration camps during the Second World War will also be disappointed. Joy Division is not about either of these things - instead this is an odd mixture of war and spy film, neither of which succeeded in capturing my imagination at all.

Set in the 1960s and including multiple flashbacks, Joy Division tells the story of Thomas (Ed Stoppard), a young German who fights against the Russian army in the dying days of the war only to later be recruited by the Russians to join the KGB. This leads to a vast amount of sneaking around, meeting with strangers to exchange cryptic messages and generally doing all the stuff that James Bond probably should be doing in between hands of poker and unstirred martinis. Of course, this is where the problem of this film lies; I'm not going to knock the authenticity of what Thomas does as a spy, but it's all very, very dull and after nearly half a century of Bond displaying the world of the spy as being cool, this film comes across as being just overly complicated and ultimately boring.

Part way through the film Thomas begins to question his role in the KGB and looks for ways to get out, but for some reason he doesn't. This is almost like Mephisto, with the main character given countless chances to escape his terrible life only to be drawn back because of a feeling of misconceived loyalty, fear or maybe a bit of both. As with many films of this type, a love story is thrown in to complicate matters. However, it's not just one love story, but two, as Thomas first becomes infatuated with Melanie (Bernadette Heerwagen) during the war, although her treatment is not a pleasant sight to watch and this is the only connection I can think of to link with the title. Suffice to say that these scenes, though nothing like the traumatic Irreversible, are not enjoyable to watch and you'll probably thank me for recommending that you fast forward through them. The second love story involves Yvonne (Michelle Gayle) and it must be said that neither story shows any chemistry between the two actors, so I can't quite understand the constant struggles that Thomas goes through.

The war scenes are exciting enough and the battles and action have been filmed well, comparable to most recent war films like Black Hawk Down. If Joy Division had just been a war film then it may have been just average, but it's these constant jumps back and forth with only the appearance of Bernard Hill as one of Thomas' informants delivering any highlights to these sections, but unfortunately he is reduced to rambling speeches that don't seem to serve any purpose other than to stop the film dead in its tracks. The structure of this film is comparable to that of The Godfather Part II with the way it jumps back and forth through time, but whereas in that masterpiece the jumps made sense and linked the two sections together, these do not and it becomes the film's major downfall.

One element that irritated me throughout the film is the use of language and accent; characters seem to speak with German, American and British accents with no uniformity. We have the character of Melanie's mother speaking with an American accent while the grandmother of the family speaks in an almost Allo' Allo' style German accent. We have Melanie speaking perfect English but then when she is being attacked she screams in German - it just doesn't make sense and is just another reason for me to hate this film… and I really didn't need any more!

There are a number of extras that depending your view of the film will either increase your enjoyment or just annoy you even more. The feature length commentary is one of the worst I've ever listened to, with Director Reg Traviss and Ed Stoppard talking only at intervals about the film. Scenes that I really wanted them to talk about in terms of why they filmed them that way (or at all) are met with total silence, while we are given in-depth commentary on how a soldier throwing his gun down to attack a woman is like a child running to the beach. Instead of a fact filled commentary, there is just a lot of useless information about fairly insignificant things that are of no interest whatsoever, and after a while I just stopped listening to them.

This is also the same for the over twenty minutes of deleted scenes, in which there is no indication in the commentary as to why the scenes were deleted and most importantly why we should care. It's my opinion that if you're going to film a scene you obviously have every intention of using it, but there are various reasons they are edited out (often due to length and pacing). Instead of giving these reasons, Traviss just explains what the scenes are about and leaves it there, but the description of each scene can do that perfectly well anyway. It's at times like this that I think deleted scene commentaries should be left for a producer or editor to comment on, as they'll have a lot more information about how the scene was cut to reduce the rating certificate or the length of the movie and so on.

The extras are rounded off with a twenty minute 'Making of' that covers all the usual parts that the commentary misses and it's actually the only thing here that convinces me that any work was put into this film at all. Of the extras, the only interesting one is entitled 'The Pilot' and is almost a seven minute dry run of the film that was probably used by the director to convince a studio to finance the film. This is all rounded off with the usual trailer for this film and the infinitely better film Downfall.

Looking back on Joy Division I'm hard pressed for good things to say; it's sad that I found the seven minute version a lot more interesting and enjoyable than the full length one, but maybe that's because with that version I didn't have to waste two hours of my life watching a poorly constructed film!

Reviewed by David Simpson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).