Instrument of War

I always get suspicious when I see a movie a few years old with very few reviews. But I decided to give this one a shot.

It's not the most captivating story I have ever seen. But it's a quality movie with a good script and good acting. My ratings are usually 1 or 2 below what's been given previously on IMDB. But this time I actually rated it higher than the previous ratings.

It's a really good movie, no violence at all. It's a war movie with a twist that leaves you with a great feeling. I definitely recommend watching it.

I don't understand the poor ratings for this. Sure if you're looking for something with all the action of Saving Private Ryan then you won't find that here but this is a beautiful film and it is the message you should take from it. Someone has rated this a 3, only watching 30 minutes of it and mocking it for being about making a violin. This is a true story and it warms my heart that in those desperate times this is something they did just to get through.

When I decided to watch this movie, I got the impression it would be a low-budget B-movie, which would have many things wrong and suffer from bad acting.

Well, nothing was further from the truth, Although the first moments of the movie confirmed my suspicions - a plane was shown which was very obviously low-quality CGI - it was the pretty decent acting that caught my attention. I therefore decided to watch it for some more time, and boy, what a good decision this was.

Based on true events that took place as of June 1944, this movie takes place in a POW-camp of the German Luftwaffe, i.e. A so-called STALAG. I was most amazed by the pretty solid acting and the attention to detail.

I often irritate myself on wrong war uniforms, wrong types of weapons or even insignia. The director of this movie seemed to however have the same feeling. Because it is clear that much attention has been put to in these details. As such, this contributed big-time in getting the right "atmosphere", of seeing events that could really have taken place. Even the camp - likely the most difficuly to reconstruct - looked pretty "WW2 like".

Overall, I was glad that I decided to completely watch this movie. Because the true events that were at the basis of the movie, made this is good watch. It even raised a controversial point, like why Allied pilots had to bomb many civilian targets, which made me immediately remind the firebombings of e.g. Hamburg, Dresden or Tokyo.

With respect to the level of acting and character-development, I already mentioned that the acting is pretty solid. Especially interested were the way in which we learnt how both the german guard - whom was directly responsible for the group of POW's featured in this movie - and the english speaking camp officer that was also responsible for the translation between camp commander and prisoners. I think more could have been gained by focussing even more on these two german soldiers. But let me be honest, the movie on this aspect already far exceeded my expectations.

Concluding, I found this movie to deserve a score of 6.4/10, resulting in an IMDb rating of 6 stars. I had to think twice on whether this movie did not deserve a score that was somewhat higher, but that would make it a 7-star rated movie. And I think the movie did not have sufficient substance to make it that far. But let me be clear, this movie is a very decent watch.

Definetly worth to watch if you like ww2 movies based on real life. It is not action packed or too much violence, however it does give you an idea of what life was for some soldier prisoners during those times. It does leave you with a great fealing in the end... war is not black or white.

A true story of imprisoned WWII allies shot down over Germany doing what they can to keep going in the PoW camp. Nicely and simply told, and very moving. A must see for any musicians - especially violinists.