Dante's Inferno

Rating: 9/10 (1 March 2007)

Gripping, harrowing portrayal of Nazi atrocities in Belarus during WW2 - a film full of startling imagery and sound (the buzzing of flies when Alexei returns to his village with Glasha), the sound of German folk music and accordions amidst manic laughter as Nazi soldiers (and their Belarussian collaborators) torch a barn full of desperate villagers.
The film's greatest achievement lies in conveying a hellish world with a nightmarish poetic quality (Alexis & Glasha struggling through a marsh bog, dolls lying grotesquely on the floor of a hut as if they have been machine-gunned) but our horror is only intensified by the fact that what we witness - through the eyes of Alexis as he journeys from wide-eyed recruit to a young man aged by what he has seen - actually happened.
Too many films take an almost 'pornographic' PlayStation view of war - WW2 was a war waged against civilians and 'Come & See' is a grim, savage as well as truthful account of man's inhumanity to man.