La Bataille de Westerplatte

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.

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.

The movie is boring. Many well known actors doesn't help at all. They can't express action and fight of WWII. Action is chaotic. Soldiers most of the time have trouble with rifles almost like they use it first time in their life. German soldiers attack from 20 meters and they do not see polish soldiers? What do they think? Special effect are very bad and you can see they are low budget. Movie is missing camera shots from distance and panorama views of Westerplatte. Dialogs are primitive. Behavior of soldiers is nonsense. No big scenes of fight, just few people with guns. It's one of the worst movies I've seen. All this movie can be cut to 15 minutes and still will be boring. It's bad not only comparing to world standard, but also compared to other polish productions. Do not watch it.

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.

"If we go to war no one will back us up." September 1st, 1939, the Polish city of Gdansk is an important port city that the German's are looking to take control of. Trying not to scare the entire country the army decides to send a small group of 600 soldiers against the Germans with only one goal, hold out for at least 12 hours. When it becomes clear that no support is coming for them and with dwindling supplies and medical aid they have to decide to fight till the last man falls or surrender. This is a true story of the first battle of WWII. This is not a terrible war movie at all and is worth seeing but it is pretty slow moving and the war scenes leave something to be desired. The movie is interesting though and really makes you understand what the Polls went through in the beginning of Hitler's advance but it is just a little too slow in some parts to stay fully focused on. Overall, a true war movie that is worth watching but don't expect wall to wall excitement. I give it a B-.