1920 - Die letzte Schlacht

How come, every time I wait for a good polish movie about some episode from Poland's history, I end up being seriously disappointed? Every time. With this movie being notable confirmation of this rule.

Battle of Warsaw. One of the most important events in Europe's or maybe even world's history. A tragic struggle, held on the very extremes of hope, justly called by some "Miracle at the Vistula", won by a thread against all odds. One would think such event would deserve an epic piece of cinematographic art. I thought so too. A movie was made at last. Why I'm not happy? First thing I despise is the lack of focus. Not the optical one – I despise the lack of focus of the story itself. It seems like creators of the picture wanted to show all of the battle breadth and depth, on every possible level: human, psychological, social, national, strategic and tactical. Guess what? It didn't work. It couldn't work. If one wants to emphasize everything, one emphasize nothing. If one wants to show everything at once, one shows nothing. All the potential of this movie was dissolved in different side-plots and micro-episodes, in the end loosing its proper load. This thin solution is spiced up with some cliché, overdone pathos and stupid, contemporary jokes. Humor in the movie lacks the feeling of a "safety valve" for troubled mind. It lacks a hint of underlying sadness, so specific for polish sense of humor in trying times. Generally it's just artificial and thoughtless.

Now a little bit about the story itself (don't worry no spoilers here). To me storyline holds striking resemblance to a bulleted list. Such lists are quite popular in polish schools as a means of putting down most important motives in analyzed literature works. They're also common in cheat-sheets. So it is in the case of this movie. Love motif? Checked! Social view? Checked! Great battle? Check! Enemy's view? Checked! The list goes on. A series of unconnected fragments. The problem is – the movie is contiguous as a story telling mean. Good movies are able to glue seamlessly all bits and pieces of single scenes into one logical, contiguous tale. "Bitwa..." in many places changes topics without warning and reason leaving many things inelegantly untold.

Next thing: photography. Sławomir Idziak is mentioned as director of photography. I say: no way! Take "Gattaca" or "Black Hawk Down". There is no way the same man was responsible for shooting them. There are some (technically) nice takes but they're mostly just copies of "BHD" style of filming. I liked them but yet hoped for something specific to this movie, something more innovative, not just another visual "same ol' thing". And about 3D... More and more often I think of 3D as a hype helper in the way: "We can't make it worthy – let's at least make it 3D". I don't oppose new techniques – they're interesting and have indifferently a potential – but I oppose using new techniques whether it makes sense or not. In this case – I'm not impressed, sorry...

And where does it leave me? I'm still waiting... hoping... and pray my wait is not in vain. In the meantime: 3 stars out of pity :(

I was so interested in watching this and to see the polish perspective of these events and how Poland more or less looked like back than. Sadly this was not presented in a believable way, everything looked new, it appeared to be some kind of costume show, hard to describe. They also behaved kind of modern, but enough about that. The cinematography was a joke, I have no idea why there was so much focus on Natasza Urbanska, all that singing didn't make much sense to me nor did it contribute to the story. It seemed very overacted, as if every actor was a theatre actor and not a movie actor. Additionally the music was total out of place most of the time, often scenes appeared to be comedic because of the music and that was not intended.

The movie plays out like a bad "Winnie The Poo" episode - but with a lot of fireworks.

There are some great performers here; a beautiful woman, handsome hero; and great, colorful costumes, horses, and all the spiel that comes with making a big-budget-movie. However, as it usually is the case with Polish cinema, the movie (as a whole) falls short. It falls short unable to decide whether it wants to be a slapstick comedy or a serious, patriotic war hymn.

The cinematography is great. Natasza Urbanska is beautiful, graceful, and not a bad actress either. But the first half of the movie is very choppy, with the action moving back-and-forth between several threads in a matter which fell short from challenging me to really care about the characters or the story.

Some of the scenes, or rather dialogues, are overtly infantile even for a Winnie The Poo episode - ruining the whole movie.

The 3D effects in some scenes are phenomenal, and in others are extremely poor.

Michael Malak - Polish-American

Slow, boring, predictable, messy, long. It was a great subject to have made a much interesting and historic film than this shamble where we have singing, dancing, humour, war, terrible acting, all in one.

Don't waste your time....

Oh, I really wanted to like this! Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed.

I have so many issues with this film. I assumed Jan (Borys Szyc) to be the film's hero, but he was absent for such a long time during the movie. I then aimed my attention at his wife, Ola (Natasza Urbanska), who was a far better prospect as the film's protagonist, but a bit unexplored.

Jan went to the war on his wedding day; while his wife was still in her wedding dress. We then follow Jan's journey from soldier to being accused of treason and sentenced to death. Luckily, he is saved by an invasion from the Bolsheviks, and his journey continued.

Ola in the meantime joins the army, as well, when she learns Jan is still alive. The film could have been so much better, but there was so much talk and so little action. The (few) action sequences were well made, but by no means impressive. I've seen many war movies and these battle scenes were not all that special. The film's colour grading also wasn't always great. Some scenes looked like they were entirely computer generated. Some looked like the camera had a filter over the lens. (Maybe this is due to the fact the film was shot for 3D. Apparently they used a Fusion Camera System, which shot in stereoscopic 3D. I suppose it looked much better in 3D, but I watched it in 2D).

One of the biggest issues I had with the film, was the score. Usually epic battle scenes have sweeping music, but with 'Battle of Warsaw' the score was almost too lively - like music you expect at a fair or circus. It completely clashed with the action on screen and made the battle scenes felt comical. Speaking of comical, moments during the attack scenes were actually funny - and I don't think it was intended to be! Tension could have been enhanced with a better score.

Ola was my favourite character, but even she was a bit unexplored. She had the potential to be a far more interesting character - like Rachel from 'Black Book' for instance.

Ultimately, the film fell flat on an emotional level. It simply was not effective enough as the love story they obviously wanted it to be. Note that it is still a reasonably good film one can enjoy, and it does have a feel-good ending.