A boy with grenade

Rating: 10/10 (10 February 2020)

There's nothing superflous in this movie. From my perspective, the humanism idea has never been depicted so bright and simple. Of course, it's a kind of a cheat code for producers to cast kids, cuz they always act better than adults, it's easier to sympathize them etc. It's a notorious trick, but here it's absolutely justified: there is no other significant way to depict the whole stupidity of agression, fanatism, misconceptions than to show a child with a grenade running towards death with an idol in his brain. The idea is rigidly placed in your brain with just a few tools: childhood, nazism and really dark satire on all those Trumps, Putins, Thunbergs sitting in our brains and dictating us to hate each other for their benefit.
I would also like to highlight Sam Rockwell's captain Klenzendorf (Strainer). He is not just a funny guy, emboding the despair of german military and folk. He is the version of the boy's future: injured, disappointed and dead. Quite symbolic that he is the one who saves the boy and the girl from execution* without trying to save himself. He was sure that Gestapo will reveal his bluff and definitely did not want to be tortured by soviets. Still, he saves the boy who broke his career and a jewish girl. The hell he suffered made him get rid of his inner idols. I hope this movie will affect the audience the same way his war efforts affected him.
* By the way, the Red army seldom killed captured germans (both militia and soldiers), we did that only in exceptional cases like a breakthrough. Moreover, the Red army saved civilians in Berlin underground inundated on Hitler's order. Most captives were sent to Syberia after the Nuremberg trials (communists forced the allies to conduct them, btw). I don't want to justify the crimes of soviets (or any other country which allowed this war) conducted during and before this war, but, really, there's no need to demonize russians, especially in this movie. From the one side this movie postulates "peace, love, understanding", on the other "russians kill civilians". No, we don't. If we want to kill someone, we start with ourselves in Gulags or KGB basements.