Tajemnica Westerplatte

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.

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.

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.

I read reviews and was somewhat apprehensive but I liked the movie. It shows different attitudes of men in extreme situations. I could be deemed corny but the life often is. And do not expect constant fire and gore.

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.