Review by millerian-02797

A fascinating war film with tons of real explosions and fantastic practical war sequences, focused on a greek spy fighting for the greek resistance. Karol strasburger is great in the lead, no time for romance, always focused on the plan itself, bargielowska plays a woman his age who he barely looks in the eye, all of the performances feel embedded in the time period, 30 years later these actors pull off feeling like 1940s prisoners of the war itself. Zbigniew kuzminski's direction is fantastic, some of the editing, framing, and war sequences are among the best i've seen in a movie all year, focused entirely on rightful chaos in each scene that plays like a gutpunch when it all builds up toward the end. The movie has an excellent gritty realism in its look, and the use of soft lighting during the dusk sequences are brilliantly crafted and shot. Scibor-rylski writes a screenplay always focused on the task, romance comes into play, but is tossed aside, he writes a script where the character feel developed without much dialogue, yet it feels remarkably by-the-books, almost like it plays into the mindset of everyone involved. The movie is also slow and dramatic, sure this plenty of war scenes, but the most central and best part of the movie is the capability of the precision in which they go about these attacks towards the Nazis, and how the dramatic sequences are an unfortunate exploration of how war dehumanizes its victims, leaving nothing in its wake but people who can never recover from the death they have seen, because that is all they know, this is also played by a fantastic set of performances, kuzminski's beautifully succinct direction among with a great choice in editor, the screenplay may seem empty but that is simply a guise for the cinematic beauty that comes afterward and before, a war movie that plays more like a tragic drama, a young man displaced, never has a life, and tragedy is just an inevitability.