Strong performances, okay story

Rating: 6/10 (15 August 2015)

"The Book Thief" is a novel-based film from between 1 and 2 years ago and it's another pretty good German-American co-production about world War II. It was directed by Brian Percival, an Emmy Award winner for "Downton Abbey", and written by Michael Petroni, whose most famous work is a "Chronicles of Narnia" film. The soundtrack comes from the legendary John Williams and was the film's only Academy Award nomination and Williams' most recent. The story is about a young girl who has to leave her mother, but soon gets very close to their new parents. It takes a while longer with her new mother and initially it is not clear if she will possibly be an antagonist. But the girl as well as her new parents are saddened by the loss of Liesel's brother, who did not survive the trip.
I have to say that, with this movie, young Canadian actress Sophie Nélisse elevates herself into the finest actresses of her age group and it seems she has all the talent (and looks) for a long career in the industry if she decides to pursue that dream. She played her part well and did not stand out negatively next to really experienced actors such as Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson. Geoffrey Rush is a personal favorite of mine and I enjoyed watching him as I always do. I would probably not list this among my very favorite performances by him, but he is a welcome presence as always and he made his character just so incredibly likable. The epitome of a good father performance. Because of the German production background, you will also find some German actors in here. Rainer Bock, Barbara Auer and Heike Makatsch (who only has one scene at the beginning) may be known to German audiences. All in all I enjoyed watching these 125 minutes (without credits). Nélisse carried this competently and even if there were no real outstanding scenes in my opinion, this was a film that never dragged in my opinion and also had a nice, almost poetic ending to it. Thumbs up. I recommend this film and it's nice to see that there are still new films about World War II that actually move you and have a good story to tell, despite the existence of uncountable movies already about that topic. Thumbs up.