Over all a slick production about things almost no one has any knowledge about any more. I knew about the Archduke being assassinated in Sarajevo but no details... did not know the invasion of Serbia was the casus belli of WWI. The film was a tad heavy on the digital enhancement side but not too bad.
I have several pet peeves with the story. The hero is Jew turned Christian DA type who is charged with investigating the Archduke's assassination. There was the dose of ugly anti-semitism.... is there nothing that can be produced with out this particular moral lesson? It dilutes the story line...which is a tad melodramatic and unbelievable anyway. To wit=The real cause for the Austro-Hungarian interest in Serbia was a cabal of greedy capitalists who wanted a railroad from Berlin to Baghdad that had to go through Serbia...sort of like the Keystone Pipeline idea. This lefty fodder is simply not likely as Baghdad in 1914 would have had all the economic interest of dry camel dung. Oil was not discovered until 1927. Also Serbia had been involved in numerous Balkan wars trying to enlarge its territory and was anti Austro-Hungarian pro Russian from 1903 on... it was anything but an innocent bystander. So it is a historical ignorant plot.
Then there is the yuppie love angle...beautiful Serbian suffragette heiress (married no less) is the romantic interest of the Jewish DA.
Wash out the PC stuff and get a more historically accurate motive and it would have been dramatically better.
I have several pet peeves with the story. The hero is Jew turned Christian DA type who is charged with investigating the Archduke's assassination. There was the dose of ugly anti-semitism.... is there nothing that can be produced with out this particular moral lesson? It dilutes the story line...which is a tad melodramatic and unbelievable anyway. To wit=The real cause for the Austro-Hungarian interest in Serbia was a cabal of greedy capitalists who wanted a railroad from Berlin to Baghdad that had to go through Serbia...sort of like the Keystone Pipeline idea. This lefty fodder is simply not likely as Baghdad in 1914 would have had all the economic interest of dry camel dung. Oil was not discovered until 1927. Also Serbia had been involved in numerous Balkan wars trying to enlarge its territory and was anti Austro-Hungarian pro Russian from 1903 on... it was anything but an innocent bystander. So it is a historical ignorant plot.
Then there is the yuppie love angle...beautiful Serbian suffragette heiress (married no less) is the romantic interest of the Jewish DA.
Wash out the PC stuff and get a more historically accurate motive and it would have been dramatically better.