Okay, but stands under the constant shadow of "Schindler's List," and is even more unabashedly sentimental

Rating: 7/10 (3 November 2004)

Although I found "The Pianist" to be a commendable and fairly well-made effort, I did not find it to be a masterpiece. It certainly has the "feel" of an epic but compared to other WWII/Jewish movies (particularly "Schindler's List") it fails.
I was shocked to see that the film had generated some fairly bad reviews on RottenTomatoes.com. I can understand where these authors are coming from -- "The Pianist" is a fine movie but uneven and not as great as it seems to think it is.
At best I can compliment the good parts because some of them really are touching, but more often than not it's just too purposely sentimental to warm up to -- I never thought I'd say this but even Spielberg's version was less sugar-coated!
Don't get me wrong, it's not glamorized and there are some brutal deaths, but it's just a bit too black-and-white and emotionally controlling for me to call it a masterpiece.
3/5