This film may be viewed as a remake of 1967's Polish classic, Westerplatte, and in some ways it is a real remake, as many scenes were very precisely reproduced, the scenery is almost identical to old black and white version. And many battle scenes are also very close to that old film. As well as some characters. Yes, full color version seems better, as well as many video FXs and some sound production. Yes, the morbid reality of deaths in action is shown pretty well, too. And then, some weaker moments creep in. The camera work is often repeating the excellent ideas of 1920. Bitwa Warszawska, but this time in a more amateur way. The heavy handed play of almost all main actors makes this already plodding film a real slow snail at a painful pace. Many moments seem very odd and totally unnecessary. What is really bad, the film often badly borders on a sheer amateurism and therefore the tragic feel of loss and failure is lost wholly. Thighs film can be watched once, for the knowledge reasons, and then quite quickly dismissed as a languid attempt at really exciting and very interesting page of History.
13 Reviews
True war movie that is worth watching but don't expect wall to wall excitement. Fighting scenes are lacking. I say B-
cosmo_tiger18 August 2013
"If we go to war no one will back us up." September 1st, 1939, the Polish city of Gdansk is an important port city that the German's are looking to take control of. Trying not to scare the entire country the army decides to send a small group of 600 soldiers against the Germans with only one goal, hold out for at least 12 hours. When it becomes clear that no support is coming for them and with dwindling supplies and medical aid they have to decide to fight till the last man falls or surrender. This is a true story of the first battle of WWII. This is not a terrible war movie at all and is worth seeing but it is pretty slow moving and the war scenes leave something to be desired. The movie is interesting though and really makes you understand what the Polls went through in the beginning of Hitler's advance but it is just a little too slow in some parts to stay fully focused on. Overall, a true war movie that is worth watching but don't expect wall to wall excitement. I give it a B-.
An unequivocal "meh"
spetersen-79-96204420 August 2013
The topic fascinated me, and seeing Polish soldiers in action is such a rare treat that I just had to buy this film. Unfortunately, many important action scenes happen off-screen, and we are just told about them later.
It almost seems as though the director was embarrassed to make a "simple" action movie, and so felt compelled to engage in psycho-drama to fill out the tale. I liked most of the actors, though, as an American, I was unfamiliar with them. I liked the sets, weapons, uniforms, and so forth.
Overall a disappointment, but a nice try.
It almost seems as though the director was embarrassed to make a "simple" action movie, and so felt compelled to engage in psycho-drama to fill out the tale. I liked most of the actors, though, as an American, I was unfamiliar with them. I liked the sets, weapons, uniforms, and so forth.
Overall a disappointment, but a nice try.
Heavy-handed, contrived, and opaque.
hwyhobo18 April 2015
I understand this movie was intended to start a conversation about the Westerplatte Polish national myth. Unfortunately, it fails on three fronts:
(1) It doesn't ask questions, it shoves the answer down our throats with heavy-handed character portrayals. (2) It operates on the basis of deep despair of the soldiers and mental breakdown, but it does not support it with battle scenes. (3) It engages in opaque, meandering plot twists and difficult to follow timeline changes.
Those three aspects combined make the movie seem contrived and hard to understand to outsiders.
(1) It doesn't ask questions, it shoves the answer down our throats with heavy-handed character portrayals. (2) It operates on the basis of deep despair of the soldiers and mental breakdown, but it does not support it with battle scenes. (3) It engages in opaque, meandering plot twists and difficult to follow timeline changes.
Those three aspects combined make the movie seem contrived and hard to understand to outsiders.
Wasted two hours
zunia9924 February 2013
The movie is boring. Many well known actors doesn't help at all. They can't express action and fight of WWII. Action is chaotic. Soldiers most of the time have trouble with rifles almost like they use it first time in their life. German soldiers attack from 20 meters and they do not see polish soldiers? What do they think? Special effect are very bad and you can see they are low budget. Movie is missing camera shots from distance and panorama views of Westerplatte. Dialogs are primitive. Behavior of soldiers is nonsense. No big scenes of fight, just few people with guns. It's one of the worst movies I've seen. All this movie can be cut to 15 minutes and still will be boring. It's bad not only comparing to world standard, but also compared to other polish productions. Do not watch it.
No characters, no story, no point
madorosh6 January 2018
I agree with the other reviewers who call this film "boring." It is possible to do a low budget war film that is compelling. You do that with characters you care about it. There are no characters in this one, just a bunch of guys in military uniforms. A couple of the characters are based on real life counter-parts. Unfortunately, they don't seem to act much like them. The movie is about a 7 day battle, but by day 2 the main characters are all wigging out, hallucinating, and doing things that don't make any sense. The extras were very poorly prepared for their scenes, most of them very conspicuously struggling to operate their weapons. Yet the soldiers they are portraying are Polish regulars - generally acknowledged to be among the world's best soldiers (even the Germans thought so). There is lots of moody music, and very poorly done special effects. Bolt action rifles send out bright coloured laser beams, in slow motion, I guess because the directors presume audiences are too stupid to know when people are getting shot at? The English subtitles are also poorly done and in some cases comical. Bad show all around.
A film that wants us to re-examine war mythology with nuance & complexity exhibits neither.
weirdquark18 July 2022
Imagine the King Leonidas meme screaming in your face:
WAR!
IS!
NUANCED!!@!!!!
Followed by subtlety & believability getting kicked screaming into a bottomless pit in glorious slow-mo.
This film is supposedly tackling a sacred cow of Polish war history (and national mythology), namely the heroic defense of Westerplatte against all odds. In doing so, it asks us to scratch beneath the surface of the heroic warrior narrative and see the reality of that event, in all its complexity and nuance and human frailty, warts and all. Unfortunately, it's a bit hard to appreciate this nuance when the film spends two hours beating our skulls with a sledgehammer and screaming in our faces about how complex and subtle the real situation was.
The characters seem to have two emotional settings: zero and ten; catatonic and hysterical, stoic and screaming. This is not subtlety or nuance. It's binary, and it rings false. The performances are soap opera melodramatic, with lots of Drama School overacting. The old 1967 version is so much better in every respect.
How can the Number 1 & 2 ranking officers spend several days issuing contradictory orders and directly undermining each other without the entire thing falling to pieces? That's absurd. Either the commanding officer would lock up the second-in-command for direct insubordination (and perhaps treason) and get on with business, or that guy would go through whatever military procedure is available to relieve his commander of duty, and then take corrective steps to right the sinking ship. You can't spend several days in the middle of combat with the top dog issuing orders and his underling simply saying "no" again and again. This is absurd.
WAR!
IS!
NUANCED!!@!!!!
Followed by subtlety & believability getting kicked screaming into a bottomless pit in glorious slow-mo.
This film is supposedly tackling a sacred cow of Polish war history (and national mythology), namely the heroic defense of Westerplatte against all odds. In doing so, it asks us to scratch beneath the surface of the heroic warrior narrative and see the reality of that event, in all its complexity and nuance and human frailty, warts and all. Unfortunately, it's a bit hard to appreciate this nuance when the film spends two hours beating our skulls with a sledgehammer and screaming in our faces about how complex and subtle the real situation was.
The characters seem to have two emotional settings: zero and ten; catatonic and hysterical, stoic and screaming. This is not subtlety or nuance. It's binary, and it rings false. The performances are soap opera melodramatic, with lots of Drama School overacting. The old 1967 version is so much better in every respect.
How can the Number 1 & 2 ranking officers spend several days issuing contradictory orders and directly undermining each other without the entire thing falling to pieces? That's absurd. Either the commanding officer would lock up the second-in-command for direct insubordination (and perhaps treason) and get on with business, or that guy would go through whatever military procedure is available to relieve his commander of duty, and then take corrective steps to right the sinking ship. You can't spend several days in the middle of combat with the top dog issuing orders and his underling simply saying "no" again and again. This is absurd.
I Expected More
MVictorPjinsiste3 April 2018
Warning: Spoilers
What's the matter with war movies of late? All of them seem to be emphazing the "human element" over that of strategy, in an attempt to say "look at how war is bad" and then cash on it anyway.
This one joins the bandwagon. I starts well enough, with a fast prelude and great bombardment scenes (the sound aspect is well done), notably with a superb CGI rendering of Schleswig-Holstein, the old battleship that fired the first shot of WWII. If it continued that way that would have been a fine movie indeed.
But then it gets lost in the details, and slowly, gradually, comes to ignore all strategical aspects to concentrate on the opposition of officers and contemplation of the soldiers' sordid stuff that made their days. Screen time is lost to insignificant episodes (like the hallucinating parts) while the spectator is held in ignorance of everything tactical. We don't even heard about the USSR also invading Poland at the same time.
Otherwise, pictures are beautiful, the sets and costumes are superb, the actors are okay and the music is fine.
This one joins the bandwagon. I starts well enough, with a fast prelude and great bombardment scenes (the sound aspect is well done), notably with a superb CGI rendering of Schleswig-Holstein, the old battleship that fired the first shot of WWII. If it continued that way that would have been a fine movie indeed.
But then it gets lost in the details, and slowly, gradually, comes to ignore all strategical aspects to concentrate on the opposition of officers and contemplation of the soldiers' sordid stuff that made their days. Screen time is lost to insignificant episodes (like the hallucinating parts) while the spectator is held in ignorance of everything tactical. We don't even heard about the USSR also invading Poland at the same time.
Otherwise, pictures are beautiful, the sets and costumes are superb, the actors are okay and the music is fine.
Awful, meandering, and pointless.
tonygriffen21 August 2023
This is a pseudo-psychological reinterpretation of the defense of Westerplatte. It is full of hysterics, pregnant pauses, unsubstantiated in documents conflicts and dramas. The unit defending the outpost was in reality hand-picked, and the commanders were seasoned and battle hardened. Instead the movie is trying to portray them all as screaming, hysterical old women, running back and forth. This is an awful movie with some decent albeit low budget special effects.
Perhaps the movie was trying to be trendy and "questioning", but questions it is trying to ask are unsupported by evidence, and the answers are confused and consisting primarily of emotional outbursts.
Add to this subpar play by the actors who occasionally seem surprised by the script, and you have a recipe for a D movie. Skip.
Perhaps the movie was trying to be trendy and "questioning", but questions it is trying to ask are unsupported by evidence, and the answers are confused and consisting primarily of emotional outbursts.
Add to this subpar play by the actors who occasionally seem surprised by the script, and you have a recipe for a D movie. Skip.
This is not a "war film" - this is our national debate
g-balazy3 November 2013
I don't blame foreigners if they can't see the controversy behind this movie but to read a Pole's review with such little understanding ...shocking. The original title of this film in Polish reads "The secret of Westerplatte". And that is what matters here. Westerplatte became a legend of Polish resistance,national symbol of heroism and sacrifice. Generations were brought up with this myth of Poland's Thermopylae. Historical truth though was much prosaic and this movie is more like a documentary which tries to give the honest account of events and raise some important questions about the sens of sending people to unnecessary death and suffering. For God's sake - this is what this film is about. And yes, soldiers of Westeplatte and in all other places like it, were dying in horror, behaving often in completely nonsensical, cowardly way, losing they cool, senses, dignity. This is a true picture of war. Poland lost 6 million people in it, mostly due to so much resistance we put up. Was it worth anything? That is what this film is about. Don't expect a B class war movie. It ain't.
Not too bad
magdalenabryla13 February 2017
Although there are many complaints about this movie it shows the drama and deceit of Poland by France and England who did not come to help. It shows that when you face surrender or fighting to the last man the choice is not easy. Even though there are no major scenes of battle it shows the drama of fighting without external help with lack of medical supplies and it shows that in the tragedy of the situation the soldiers did the best they could. God bless those men who died for POLAND. God bless their souls. Germany. We WILL NEVER forget!!! We will never forget what communists did to WW2 heroes after the war when too many of them had no pension and means to survive. Modern globalist propaganda is equally bad as German and Soviet one. Do not confuse patriotism and honor with being against other countries. Protect your countries and love them.
Telling it like it was
supritikotler17 June 2022
I appreciated the brutal reality of this recreation of what it must have felt like to feel the futility of facing the full force of the Germans on an in fortified island with no Hope of reinforcements but the pride of wanting to stand and die fighting rather than surrender.
The best 'war'films are anti-war films and this was well done.
The best 'war'films are anti-war films and this was well done.
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