hesham-abboud

I have always been fascinated about the 1973 war. Here in Egypt it's considered one of the greatest war and a huge victory. I read a lot about this period in Egyptian history, especially the books wrote by President Sadat himself and the army generals at that time. Also my dad was an army officer so I was able to ask and know a very specific and detailed info.

But this is the first time to watch and see the story being told by the other side. Considering that the director and the majority of the cast are from Israel, I expected nothing less than what I saw.

The movie as a movie despite the true events is good. From acting, to story line, to script to makeup, they're fairly good. The locations and decorations however were absolutely stupid, and I mean those in Egypt and in Libya. Those decorations were done over 300 years ago and a small research on the internet could reveal how they actually look like.

As for the events, which is the big question here, are they really true or not? It's yes and no. The main flow of the events was accurate, I mean yes Nasser blocked naval trade in front of Israel in 67, Israel responded and we. Egypt, lost our air force in 6 hours and lost the whole war on all sides after 6 days. Yes Sadat wanted diplomatic approaches. Yes we went to war in 1973.

But what's not accurate, for example, the way the movie portrayed president Sadat. Also that scene when 3 of his officials resigned and called them traitors that was absolutely nonsense. They, among another ministers, were arrested and imprisoned for a whole different reason. The idea of applying the Shepard guy story was totally not Ashraf Marwan's idea. If there's anything true about Sadat in this movie it was the line when he said "He's completely unpredictable".

The last speech by Sadat is originally in Arabic, presenting it in English was complete foolishness. The speech lasted about 15 minutes and worth to be watched alone.

One last thing, I understand why the director used a cast mainly from Israel, but the accent they spoke was very stupid. Also Libya's flag was wrong, don't know how they missed it along side the Egyptian flag.

I confess, I hesitated a lot before watching this movie as it has a relatively low rating. But after reading some of the reviews I decided to go with it. The movie is amazing, so emotional so realistic about war and its consequences, especially on minority group whom suddenly find their lives, their history, their whole world is collapsing on their heads for no reason but hatred.

The Armenian genocide is a crime that occurred a 100+ years ago, it's real and it's tragic and we, as human beings, should never forget about it or any other genocide that occurred anywhere in the world at anytime, and especially those which are being done right now as I write these words in Yemen and Syria.

The performance was nothing but amazing from all the actors, good directing, may be a bit slow sometimes but necessary and a very good script.

When I first heard about this movie, the first thing came to my mind was the masterpiece Braveheart as it continues the line of events. And although the movie is no where near a comparison with Braveheart, the movie is surprisingly good. I have to admit I was little afraid when I knew Chris Pine was casted as the leading rule, but he did a good job given his abilities. The best thing in this movie was the costumes and locations, hey were picked up and made very well and realistic. Music wasn't that good also not that bad. The other actors did a very good job. Fighting scenes were by very far good. Overall I enjoyed the movie, but as I saied, not anywhere near the comparison with the father of history movies, BRAVEHEART.