The German army earned its nickname “bloody Huns” in the opening weeks of World War I. Their atrocities — slaughtering civilians, razing villages and towns — in 1914 Flanders and Wallonia instantly marked them as new barbarians, modern Huns, and that stain lasted through two world wars.

“The Last Front” is a sturdy, sentimental, WWI story of a Flanders town in those early weeks.

A farmer sees his son and daughter shot down by invaders led by a drunken sociopath whose commanding officer indulges his blood lust, with only the mildest of reproaches.That commanding officer is the German lieutenant’s father.

No, it’s not a subtle film. Nor were the Germans, it’s worth remembering. But it’s handsomely mounted and well-acted, and reaches a fine if far-fetched action climax. Not that the climax is the first time we’ve thought “Well, this is a bit much.”

Iain Glen of “Game of Thrones” and “Operation Napoleon” is our hero farmer, Leonard, a man of the land still haunted by memories of his late wife, trying to keep their blond Adonis son Adrien (James Downie) from marrying above his station, as he did.

The fetching doctor’s daughter Louise (Sasha Luss) makes that quite the challenge. Fortunately, Leonard can count on younger daughter Joanna (Emma Dupont) to reveal how serious they are.

“If you love her you’ll let her go.”

But all that, and Louise’s family’s (Koen De Bouw, Caroline Stas) disapproval, tumbles into insignificance when the Germans pour into neutral Belgium as part of the Schlieffen Plan to flank the French and British and knock them out at the start of hostilities.

Among the “women and children” murderers, Lt. Laurentz Von Rauch (Joe Anderson of TV’s “Hannibal”) has to be one of the worst. A hot-tempered drunk, he initiates reprisals for every man in his company killed, often pulling the luger trigger himself.

He’s allowed to do this by his slow-to-act baronial commanding officer (Philippe Brenninkmeyer), the only father in the German army to let his son point his pistol at him during his drunken tirades.

Time and again we hear the baron make this or that threat, and never rein in the son who keeps insisting “I am NOT a monster!” The dead give-away that the son is a monster is his protest that he isn’t.

Every encounter with a Belgian is fraught with lots of luger-waving menace, none of it restrained by Kapitan Dad. That’s how the occupation of Leonard’s farm goes wrong. Laurenz seizes the younger daughter, the son fights him over this and both of Leonard’s children get shot.

It’s to first time feature director and co-writer Julien Hayet-Kerknawi’s credit that as much as his film depends on archetypes and a simple “revenge” plot, he doesn’t let it be limited by either of those. Leonard is more distraught than consumed with rage. He’s not a superhero, a super soldier or even a farmer with “special skills.” He’s not a particularly good shot, for instance.

But when the village priest (David Calder) entrusts Leonard with getting the townspeople across the French border, he must act. And as he does, vengeance enters into the story. And how.

The villainy here may be historically defensible, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t cinematically over-the-top. If our villain bothered to shave, he’d be pretty much twirling his mustache between deranged slaughters.

There are entirely too many pauses for poetic reveries for the picture to have the pace it needs. This was a chaotic, panic-stricken place and time, with the Germans in a rush to win the war before anybody gave a thought to digging a trench, the Belgians fighting back, the Allies struggling to respond to this mortal threat on their left flank and helpless civilians trapped in the middle.

The Germans become obsessed with “The Resistance,” as if they’re thinking one war ahead (nobody would have been using that term in the late summer of 1914).

And every time Father Von Rauch fails to stop his psychotic son, I was almost taken out of the picture.

But Glen is a magnificent presence who holds the melodramatic elements together, no matter how far-fetched they get. Anderson is perfectly loathsome as his opposite number, and the mad scramble of the action scenes work.

If you’re one of those film fans who will watch any movie about The Great War you’ll probably be more forgiving of “The Last Front,” which takes its title from a cumbersome aphorism about civilians in a war zone. But if you’re not and you roll your eyes at it, no one should argue that you have a point.

Rating: unrated, graphic violence, some profanity

Cast: Iain Glen, Sasha Luss, Joe Anderson, Philippe Brenninkmeyer, Koen De Bouw
Leander Vyvey, David Calder and James Downie

Credits: Directed by Julien Hayet-Kerknawi, scripted by Julien Hayet-Kerknawi and Kate Wood. An Enigma release.

Running time: 1:38