★ 4 / 10
This is a good movie that paces well
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This is a good movie that paces well, is beautifully shot, has interesting characters and should appeal to everybody...
This is a good movie that paces well, is beautifully shot, has interesting characters and should appeal to everybody...
★ 2 / 10
The Poet - Hearts of War (2007) directed
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The Poet - Hearts of War (2007) directed by Damian Lee and written by Jack Crystal is a Holocaust movie which centers around the forbidden love story of a…
The Poet - Hearts of War (2007) directed by Damian Lee and written by Jack Crystal is a Holocaust movie which centers around the forbidden love story of a rabbis daughter fleeing persecution and an idealistic German poet turned officer forced to fight in a war he fundamentally does not believe in.
Holocaust movies generally are deeply emotional pieces with a straightforward take on an aspect of the holocaust, even the bad movies accomplish that. For example, take The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008), a highly controversial film about the tragic friendship between a Nazi boy whose father runs a death camp, and a Jewish boy who works in the camp. The film has a highly unconventional plot which culminates to a even more unconventional ending. It leaves viewers with a sense of compassion for a high ranking Nazi official, something that made many people, including myself, outraged. Even though the movie focused on the wrong side of the Holocaust, it made the viewers care about the characters presented in the story and developed a plot. The poet did nothing of the sort.
For a movie incorporating such a promising idea coupled with well defined characters, it was inexcusably bad. It took a forbidden holocaust love story and somehow made it boring; the writers used some sort of black magic to turn scenes like, the death of a newborn baby or the selfless sacrifice of a lover, into almost feelingless mundane events. It also takes an absurdly large amount of time looking at Oscars discontent with WWII, and wars in general, rather than focusing on developing its own plot. If there was a, The Holocaust as a Decoration movie category, The Poet - Hearts of War would fit perfectly into it, unfortunately since that category does not exist, I would have to consider this a tangential Holocaust film. The people scripting this seemed to have a bad case of plot ADHD, the storyline incorporates far too many pieces at once and in the process losses any sense of what it is.
I think Gary Goldstein at the Los Angeles Times hit it right on the head when he said There's a viable story lurking within the World War II melodrama The Poet, but much of it likely landed on the cutting room floor. The movie has an unfortunate amount of wasted potential. IMDB far too kind with its 5.3/10 rating. The movie was nominated for no awards, has no listing on Metacritics, and not even enough reviews to get a percentage from Rotten Tomatoes. I think it is fair to say the 11 Million Canadian Dollars spent on this movie would have been better used as kindling for a fire to keep Rachel warm at the beginning of the movie, then she would have never needed rescuing and this whole story could have been avoided.
In the ending scene of the movie, Oscar states to his captive, One day this war will end
everyone will go back to normal
at least the dead will not know how futile it was. Replace the word war with movie and that perfectly sums up my feelings for The Poet - Hearts of War, at least the dead did not have to suffer through it. I would give this movie a well deserved 1.7/10.
(I Wrote this Review for a Film Class, Only Reason I Bothered Writing It.)
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★ 6 / 10
If you're going to make a film about
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If you're going to make a film about Europeans, don't cast Americans in the roles - the types that go to films because of movie stars are not your target…
If you're going to make a film about Europeans, don't cast Americans in the roles - the types that go to films because of movie stars are not your target audience anyway. This somewhat jarring inauthenticity ruins what is otherwise a well-made tearjerker.
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