War is ugly, no happy ending here.

Rating: Null/10 (23 February 2013)

This movie has an unusually low IMDb rating, perhaps because some don't like the political positions of writer/director Angelina Jolie? For that reason mainly I avoided it for a long time but saw it today. War is ugly, no one comes away happy, but this movie provides a glimpse into what it was like. As those who participated in making the movie have said, it is all very realistic.
Most of the actors are native to the area, Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina. In fact many of them were children during the subject conflict, almost 4 years from early 1992 through late 1995. It started after former communist Yugoslavia broke up, and the remaining Bosnian area was inhabited by Muslim Bosniaks (44 percent), Orthodox Serbs (31 percent) and Catholic Croats (17 percent), different ethnic groups that had gotten along for years, but now became locked in fierce and deadly battle. This movie focuses on the ethnic cleansing by rounding up and executing the Muslim Bosniaks.
The war story is told with a fictional love story. A 24-yr-old Zana Marjanovic is Ajla, a Muslim and an artist, and she is excited about meeting a new guy, Goran Kostic, Danijel, a Serb. They go to a night spot with singing and dancing, when a bomb explodes, perhaps signaling the beginning of the war.
The movie which runs nearly 2 hours has the story of Ajla and Danijel woven into the war. Danijel is an officer in the Army, he discovers Ajla in one of the camps where the women cook, mend clothes, and provide sexual services. He has her brought to his camp where he protects her and carries on a strange romance tainted by the fact that he is the enemy of her people, seeking to eliminate them.
The movie is a good reminder of the ugliness of war.