Insurrection

I'm not Polish but my grandfather was a b-17 co-pilot and part of "Operation Frantic" (look it up on Wikipedia) so I have been interested in the Warsaw uprising and in particular the Soviet abetting of the Nazis by intentionally halting to let let the Warsaw resistors be slaughtered, blocking US attempts to aid them, and blocking other Polish resistance from helping as well. Really the way WWII is taught in the US, the absolute continual duplicity of the Soviet Union is utterly ignored, as is the fact that the Soviets were allied with the Nazis at the start of the war, enabling the war to start, for the very purpose of dismembering Poland completely, with Katyn Forest being just one example. And then at the end of the war, as Soviet troops advanced in Eastern Europe they made certain o do everything they could to insure as many Polish anti-Nazi fighters that might not be soviet controlled were killed.

On the film itself, Warsaw '44 is highly immersive and well done from a technical point of view showing the kinetic and hyperviolent nature of 20th century urban warfare. As far as the human interest aspect, yes it is a bit overly melodramatic but not overwhelmingly so.

Lastly the top review at the moment says this is an anti-war film. It thankfully is not. Yes a lot of warfare is oppressive, but a lot is a bout liberation. Without the US civil war we would have had slavery a lot longer. Without the US joining WWII to help liberate Europe, the the choices would have been the twin evils of Nazism and communism. Without the US going to war against Japan, both Korea and China, would have been slave states of the Japanese empire. Without the Korean war, S. Korea would have looked like N. Korea the past 65 years. In fact if not for the ancient Greeks going to war against the Persian hordes we have to wonder if a big part of Europe would look like the backward mess that is Iran has been and is.

This is a VERY well made film, and refreshingly so from a production that is not American. The visual effects are amazing and in my opinion do NOT take away from the emotions of the actual story.

I doubt the tragic history of Warsaw has ever been this brutally and realistically portrayed. One of the best WWII movies out there. It has found the balance between using cool and bloody visuals and slow-mo effects without making it so over the top that it becomes a pure action movie.

What makes me give 9 instead of 10 stars is the storyline, which even though great and not too cliché does lack something. I can't really pinpoint what it is.

But overall, this is a brilliant historical drama!

First a quick in-deep synopsis. This movie is about probably the blackest hour of the history of Poland: it shows the Warsaw Uprising in the summer of 1944. The underground resistance movement after 5 years of Nazi occupation brought an open fight to the streets of capital. They planned for a 2-3 days struggle, but the battle went for 2 months; while the Russians forces driving the Germans back to the III Reich territory stopped at the Vistula river on the other side of the city (not crossing it for another 4 months). But this is not a biographical movie or chronicle account of historic events. The Uprising is (not so merely) a setting for a love triangle between a boy and 2 girls. And that is historically correct: many teens and children took active part in that WW2 battle

A love story in a war environment can very easily turn into a blockbuster soap opera. A movie about the national tragedy can easily turn into an obituary overloaded with shallow patriotic clichés. A well financed war picture can be an empty festival of special effects and explosion. But the "Warsaw '44" (in Poland entitled "City 44") does not. The director / screenwriter Jan Komasa swiftly avoided all of those traps. The viewers may also think that this movie will be boring, because of the slow pasted beginning of the story. But after seeing on the screen the first dropped body and some time later the first fantasy-like kiss scene, this is all but gone: we are fully pulled into this epic war and love story. Also stereotypical mines like "all Polish people are good / heroic and all Germans are evil / cowards" are nicely diffused through the entire picture. Of course the viewers are shown scenes like an execution of civilians by Germans soldiers and accounted for polish medical personnel taking care of wounded Germans; but we also get to see a polish officer pulling his rank to have a free sex with a polish girl, as well we see a German soldier vouching for some Poles in front of a Wehrmacht sweep commando. Viewers are also left with questions like: did the main charter kill a defenseless German soldier or was a mercy shown to him?

The technical level of this picture is at the top. If you like big budget Hollywood films, then this one is for you. Albeit it was made in Europe, there is very little in terms of special effects that could be done better in it. And this movie is like "The Matrix" (1999): in that (aside from the use of bullet time) it probably does not come up with anything new (with the exception the aforementioned kiss scene). But it does combine all of the well know elements (from both action / war genre and the chick flick features) and creates out of them a whole new quality, with attractive visuals and sound effects. For example the putting of a camera on a barrel of a hand held gun you could already see in the "9th Company" (2005); but here it still feels quite fresh and puts you in a middle of that action like when playing a computer game (an attempt that landed quite flat in he same year in the "Doom" movie, based on a eponymous first person shooter). And the confrontation between the two girls is made in such crafted and unexpected fashion, with bitter words painting how a post war existence will most likely look like for one of them, that it is just heartbreaking. And there are many memorable scenes of battle, joy, death and sex; with the most disturbing being the one showing a panic attack in the city's sewer system

As for the music- it plays a vital role. But do not expect a typical symphonic background, an all to epic choruses or some cheap jump scares; because the score is often quite simplistic. The composer Antoni Lazarkiewicz created both pure piano and neo-classical tracks but also a modern fusion of strings, guitars and electronic sounds, matching the screen events. And on top of that they have put various songs into this picture; including among others: a track by The Ink Spots from 1940's, a track from 70's by Czeslaw Niemen and to a much more surprise a piece of dub step. Without giving away the details, that dub step fits perfectly in those visually and emotionally crafted two scenes (kind of like the "All Along The Watchtower" reworked by Bear McCrery, written in 1967 by Bob Dylan, fitted nicely into a season finally of "Battlestar Galactica" s-f series in 2007). So not only is the original score great but also the music supervision deserves a kudos

And for those who say that the presented story is chaotic: you are half right. War (and love) can be a chaotic thing, so the movie simply reflects that. But also how and what we see simply comes out from the given style: the camera always follows one of the three main characters; and as such you do not get to see for example the landing of (very limited number of) regular polish army troops (equipped by the Russians), sent to boost the morale of the ongoing guerrilla fight in the surrounded city. Those troops just kinda show up on the streets one day- as they would for you, if you were a simple resistance movement combatant just doing your thing. But this and others actual events (like a scarce parachute drops made by western Allies, explaining to some point how could possibly the fighters survive for 2 months on scarce supplies) could be more and / or clearer incorporated into the story. It would give some more info to the less historically educated viewers and make "Warsaw '44" also a little longer than just over two hours. And because of that the rating of this great movie is only 10/10, and not 11/10

My both parents took an active part in Warsaw Uprising, and growing up in Warsaw I absorbed a whole lot of facts and points of view from the rest of my family, neighbors, books,newspapers, TV, and other movies about the Uprising. For the obvious reason this movie is very personal to me, and for the most part took me really close to the image of the events I've had since my childhood. The love triangle is not too important to me, as it could be replaced with another situation, typical for young people of this age. The battle scenes are extremely gruesome, but seem to be closer to reality than many war movies will show you. My uncle was cut in half by the bomb blast and the family could only bury the body from the waist down. My father was moving through the sewage system, full of stench from dead bodies and rats feasting on the corpses. Once he emerged he was not able to talk at all for several months. My parents were as young and full of life as the characters in the movie, and although love was definitely not a priority back then, the youth and all the things associated was a dominant factor. So this is how this movie talks to me - the youth is such an incredible force, it allows a man to go through Dante's hell.

It's a little stylised in parts but otherwise this Polish production is very well made. It tells the story of a group of young adults who join in the Warsaw uprising of 1944.

Fully expecting it to be a two day, patriotic adventure, with the Russians (allies of their allies) at the outskirts of the city, they attack the Germans with little more than small arms and a few grenades. But.. the Russians didn't advance and, perhaps more importantly, the Germans didn't retreat.

What followed was the absolute destruction of Warsaw, the slaughter of 200,000 of its 900,000 inhabitants and the imprisonment of all but 1,000 of the rest of them.

It's gritty and violent and sometimes even disturbing, but it's also a part of history that needs telling and seeing. Watch it for that reason if nothing else. 7.5/10.