So over-rated...

Rating: 4/10 (3 October 2003)

Simply put, I was NOT impressed by this movie. For as much hype as it got, I expected a well done, bleak and depressing, nazi era film. Well it wasn't.
The characters are cut outs of the traumatized people we are supposed to feel intimate with. The storyline moves along too fast, and we get no chance to develop an attachment to anyone. It's as if Polanski assumes we will automatically feel a sadness and connection to anyone persecuted by the Nazi's. Well in real life, of course. It's as if we are hurried along just so the director can get us to the point in the movie where we watch Adrian Brody's character suffer, starving and freezing. None of the relationships felt authentic, but they had all the trappings to make them look that way.
By the end of the film I was left feeling like there could have been so much more. I don't think I missed the point on this one. So many people fell head over heels for this film, but personally I think it's a shallow love affair. And yes, I probably sound angry. That's because I was hoping this film would be all that it seemed. You won't really be wasting your time seeing it, and you might like it, but it's not a gut-wrenching depiction of Nazi-era cruelty.