Trey Yancy This is a film for Halo fans. If you aren't, a lot of this is meaningless - three minutes of beautiful CG with vague snippets about a wrecked space ship, followed by an hour of teen angst, then a shoot-em-up on campus with space aliens and a snippet about the space ship again. If you don't know the games, you don't get much out of this. Other than a couple of training exercises, the first hour pretty much drags - teen melodrama.

Granger Well-done story about cadets in the Halo-world military training facility. Would be better if people knew the Cortana and Master Chief story. As it is, slightly weak ending but fascinating storyline and good acting, filming and directing.

dsalouk Halo 4; Forward Unto Dawn continues the trend every movie that has been adapted from a game has set; it fails incredibly. The director; Stewart Hendler, has shown that he has brought his unique type of direction to this movie, and in doing so, it has a poor structure, and incredibly poor acting. The chemistry between Thom Green and Anna Popplewell is unbelievable, and at times their dialogue is obviously scripted. The excitement of seeing the Chief himself was not enough to carry this movie that failed on most fronts. For a viewer watching this as a stand alone film, it is disappointing and lacklustre, however, if you're an avid Halo player, then maybe there is enough nostalgia and references to keep the tedious story afloat.

atlasmb I found this on Netflix as a 91 minute "movie". As a fan of the video game franchise, I decided to watch it. As always I will evaluate this film as independent of the source material, but I will include some notes about the games.The film starts fairly typically, following the progress of a group of young cadets at a military academy. They are training to do battle with "the Insurrectionists"--a group of "terrorists" who may just be outworld farmers rebelling against taxes.Thomas Lasky (Tom Green) is the central character--a cadet who sees himself as a pacifist and who has trouble living up to the legacy of his military family. But all of the cadets are untested and have no idea how they would react under real fire.Their ivory tower dedication to the cause is jarringly interrupted by an actual attack, but the invaders are like nothing they have ever seen. How can they survive against a superior force of aliens?The photography and the music are both excellent, immersing the viewer into a dynamic and sometimes spooky conflict. But the story is disjointed, with significant parts left unexplained. The actors, though young, become believable as the action unfolds.I cannot give this film a good score, due to the deficiencies in the story. But I can recommend the film to anyone who loves the games, like I do. What fun to see the Master Chief come to life, to see great depictions of the warthog, the grunts and weapons like the needler. The various members of the Covenant, though only briefly depicted in some cases, were a joy to see.