Not deserving any honors,a vast disappointment in every department.

Rating: 4/10 (15 April 2009)

Now to expand & explain my above summary.
Stephen Daldry Directed & David Hare adapted the screenplay.in the same sloppy,disjointed manner they did with THE HOURS a few years back.
The Hours was at least well acted,& Kate Winslet did a more believable acting job in that than she does here. I,for one cannot conceive why she was even nominated for any awards for this very uninteresting, unbelievable and unconvincing role.
SPOILER ALERT===== SPOILER ALERT
She is supposed to be illiterate, We first see her in 1955 as' a street car conductor,I doubt that any transit company would hire a person who could not read. 11 years earlier,she is in the SS & a guard at a Concentration Camp, I doubt very much that the SS would of head her in that position. We now jump 10 more years to her WAR CRIMES trail.She and 4 other female guards were transporting inmates (mainly women & Children). Due to a raging storm,the inmates are sheltered in a church,which conveniently gets bombed,They do not let the inmates out all perish except one mother and child do miraculously escape.(we find this out later). Granted this is a tragic event, BUT i did not believe one iota of it. I may have seen this tragedy played out before, either in a Civil War or Native American story.
All the above is in the second half of the movie, the first part,her sexual escapades with a very good looking 15 year old boy.(they cast a 17 yr old lad & had to wait till he was 18 to do the nude sex scenes)
Granted the lad was 'horney', but did we need to see so many naked sex scenes.David Kross is the lad & he does a good job. We also see him at 23,when she is on trail. How convenient,illogical would be better.
Ralph Fiennes is the lad (Micheal) all grown up in more modern scenes, See while the were having sexy t years ago he was reading to her not knowing she was illiterate. He sends her tapes in prison & she learns to read. I was not convinced,in fact I was bored & talking back to the screen. Ralph is usually much better, here he is DULL>
The settings are OK,the aging makeup is good, Maybe some one will explain this to me.
Ratings: ** (out of 10) 54 points(out of 100) IMDb 4 (out of 10)