A strong standout worthy of its placement on the top one hundred films ever made

Rating: 10/10 (4 June 2011)

For a movie as monumental as Schindler's List, I believe a review should be conducted in a different style. Normally, my reviews consist of multiple paragraphs, summarizing the plot and my thoughts on the film. This time I want to give five reasons why Schindler's List was easily one of the most powerful and breathtaking motion pictures I've ever seen. It goes above and beyond anyone's expectation, and cements itself on the list of greatest films of all time. Here's why.
1. Acting. No one could write about Schindler's List and not talk about Liam Neeson's Oscar worthy performance as Oskar Schindler, the business man from Czechoslovakia. He plays it with power and full force, grade A acting. Still shocked his leading performance didn't win him the Oscar in 1994.
2. Storyline. Instead of focusing on one of the survivors, or a fictional story for that matter, Spielberg chooses to focus on Oskar Schindler, a rather unsung chapter and character of The Holocaust. Oskar Schindler worked for the Nazis, and is famous for using his great wealth to buy hundreds of Jews to make them work in his factory. It wasn't much, but it prevented death, and they would make bowls for the Nazis. Even though the film goes into a subject, some may not know, the storyline is definitely one of the strongest points.
3. The end sequence. I don't want to ruin the final scenes in the film, but let's just say, it's one of the most effective and well done scenes in film history.
4. The film's desire to "show it all." When Holocaust movies are made, so try to water the film down by not showing the terrible treatment of innocent Jews. This one doesn't. Despite the event being gruesome, tasteless, and ignorant, no movie should subject itself to water down the scenes. Unless it's PG-13, and I doubt many Holocaust movies are. Schindler's List isn't all about the gas chambers and things most of us already know. We witness two of the worst things possible; (1) innocent people taken out to the yard and being shot in the head with absolutely no feeling on the guard's part and (2) we see the heart-wrenching scenes of peoples belonging getting tossed off balconies like garbage. That part I almost couldn't bear to watch.
5. The complete carelessness for human life. Face it, the Jews and many other races were dehumanized come time of The Holocaust. Life didn't matter to anybody. You could tell a Nazi officer that you just killed sixty thousand Jews in one day and they wouldn't flinch, yell, smile, or object. They would say "Good work." They wouldn't take into consideration you just killed sixty thousand mothers, father, brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, and worst of all, children of both sexes. One scene in the film, right before a woman is shot in the head, the camera zooms in on her to show her frightened reactions, her pale face, and her clearly nervous behavior. Spielberg most likely did that to remind viewers that the victims in this movie were people and they were innocent people with their own feelings in life. Dehumanization lived in The Holocaust.
Schindler's List currently ranks number nine on the American Film Institute's (AFI) list of one hundred greatest American films ever made. I am a firm believer that if this wasn't in Spielberg's hands, it wouldn't touch that list. Thankfully, we get one down to Earth and very vibrant Holocaust movies that manages to accomplish what it should. Just an all around amazing film.
Starring: Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes, Caroline Goodall, Jonathan Sagall, and Embeth Davidtz. Directed by: Steven Spielberg.