unconvincing, shallow, pointless

Rating: 3/10 (4 September 2017)

when I viewed this movie, the question why anyone bothered to make it kept coming back to me.
I know nothing about the first world war and even less about the Armenian genocide that was part of it, but I know enough to see that this story over-simplifies the issue and understates the atrocities by a wide, insulting margin. An accurate portrayal of these events is clearly not the point of the movie.
I am not a romantic person or so my wife tells me, but I know enough to see that this is a horrible over-simplification of how romantic attraction can pose dilemmas in a wartime setting. We can safely rule out the desire to tell a good romantic story as the reason as well.
I do not know how exactly special effects and other technical aspects of film making combine to produce an acceptable level of realism, enough not to get in the way of the story. But I know enough to see that this is not meeting even the most amateurish standards in that area. When no-one is holding the helm of a sailing vessel because the crew is otherwise occupied, it will turn in unintended directions. When a truck crashes into a ravine, it does not turn up running quite happily a few days later, its cargo of medical instruments including delicate glassware intact. We can assume that it was not intended as an action movie either ...
So the worst thing is perhaps that the question why the movie was produced remains intriguingly untouched. Someone must have written a proposal and some investors must have thought to themselves that the story had potential .... questions, questions.