Insurrection

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.

Wow, just wow! The film's visuals are absolutely stunning! This is a good old-fashioned love story with a very strong vengeance element, as well, amidst the horrors of war. Unlike most war films, though, this one does not concentrate on war gore, but there are quite a few disturbing scenes that will make you shudder. The film has great characters with excellent character development, and the acting was great, too. At times the film's unpredictability will make you jolt in your seat. Jozef Pawlowski makes a credible, determined hero with vengeance burning in his heart. This incredible production is easily one of my favorite war films, if not my favorite. The music was awesome.

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!

If I can summary this movie I would have to do that in two category:

Historical accuracy - 10/10 Story and emotional roller-coaster - 9/10

This film is a short introduction to the real history of Poland. It speaks through the the young people whose real live in Warsaw between the end of July 1944 and the beginning of October 1944 looked exactly how it was shown in the movie. Absolutely amazing accuracy of the depicting of some events and episodes of the Warsaw Uprising 1944. If you think it's exaggeration, IT'S NOT (even the scene with blood and humans' remains falling out of the sky is authentic)!!

I know the famous scene with the kiss looks strange from first view, but this is 'ars poetica', it was (and it's) to show what's going on in the hearts of those young and inexperienced people.

What film is not - it's not documentary movie and above all, it's not another fake-story Hollywood-like movie (see e.g. absurd and actually stupid series of war movies with Brad Pitt).

I could not sleep after watching of this film and there were many like me. I don't think there is a normal person who would see this movie (knowing that the story inside is the real depict of real events) without any emotional reactions. I really recommend it.

YOU MUST SEE IT !!!

Jan Komasa's "Warsaw 44" is an audacious and impressive, genre-blending pop-cultural epic war or, as some might put it, anti-war motion picture that hits the nail on the head with unusual and daring vision from an unknown director from Poland.

The story is as simple as it gets. It's just before the summer of 1944 in occupied Warsaw, Poland. Nazi's are retreating slowly leaving the eastern front behind. The Second World War is coming to its end and clearly new order is about to be established. Poland, which had suffered numerous tragic blows of fate in its history, finally has a chance to prove its right for independence.

Stefan (fresh, unobvious and heavy on delicate retro 40's charm Jozef Pawlowski) is the only breadwinner after he lost his father at the beginning of the war. In order to make it and get by with his grief stricken mother and younger brother Jas Stefan unlike his peers is away from getting involved into polish resistance rebellion preparing for the uprising against German occupation. It takes an unfortunate event for Stefan to be forced to join the underground polish Home Army where he meets his old friends and a girl – Alicja (brilliant Zofia Wichlacz). Stefan keeps his new engagement secret from his troubled mother. And then one day surprisingly to everybody involved there comes an order to start the uprising, which is meant to last three days but eventually will lead to a bloody apocalypse.

From the beginning of the movie we experience a visual orgy of different genres mixed together dipped in a salsa gravy of brutal and bloody scenes provocatively shot in a very colorful and even at times fairy-like manner with a little bit of ironical kitsch unlike a typical war cinema has made us to expect. Komasa insanely puts young actors on an emotional roller coaster where things resemble a nightmarish Klimov's "Come and see" crossed with a Disney fairy tale juxtaposing a slo-mo of bullets circling around the kissing lovers with the downpour of blood and guts in one of the most gruesome scenes to be shown in cinema. The way of storytelling makes us follow the characters but surprisingly not because of their psychology, which seems as simple in construction as it gets concerning the fact that we watch people in the middle of unleashed hell where they can only escape or take cover occasionally shoot a bullet at an invisible German enemy. At first you would like to have characters which are more proactive but then - hey! It's war, not another Rambo movie. The characters are tools or goggles through which a viewer can experience the simulation of the world, which does not pretend to be Warsaw from 1944 either. It's more of a dreamy creation, a fantasy, phantom all coming from the director's mind bravely composed with uneasy feeling of disappointment, as if helmer writer wanted to express his doubt whether we would ever let it go and just live together not minding differences in this Babel world.

Whoever is seeking realism, regular narrative war movie and psychologically twisting drama would feel disappointment watching "Warsaw 44" since it's a rare, provocative, ambitious and original gem, a super budget experiment on one of the biggest and most horrifying events in XX century, a bloody opera staged before our damned eyes to show us the fire we lit up ourselves once in a while in the name of hatred and self-destruction.