Reviews

I came across this movie by pure chance. Browsing through DVDs in the supermarket I bought it on a whim. Boy, am I glad I did. Given the subject matter it is grim in places (and if you don't shed a tear at times you have no heart!) but please do not let this put you off viewing what is in the end a truly inspiring tale of courage and fortitude overcoming the horrors of The Holocaust. I viewed it under the title 'Escape From Warsaw' and struggled to find it under this name on IMDb. And when I did find it, I was amazed to find it only had a rating of 7/10. Not bad of course, but this movie for me deserves a 10.

The little boy who plays the lead is totally convincing and acts way beyond his years. The rest of the cast is also excellent and the Polish countryside and forests are seen in all their glory throughout. I cannot recommend this movie highly enough.

I bought the box set of 'Combat' a while back and have been working my way through each episode in chronological order, and I have to say that so far this has been one of the very best episodes I've seen - not least for the wonderful performance of Beau Bridges as a raw 15 year old recruit, suddenly realising that war is not like the comic books.

Men die and the enemy are out to kill you. I believe Bridges was 22 or so when he made this, yet he really does look 15 or 16 years old, and turns in a touching performance of an innocent youth suddenly caught up in a madness he's totally unprepared for. His spats with Saunders and the rest of the troop are totally believable and it's a story that never becomes bogged down, with a nice mix of action and humour.

As another reviewer has said, the one criticism could be the usual poor shooting of the Germans in comparison to the sharp-shooting of the Americans (as snipers you would expect them to be crack shots after all!). 'Combat' was not quite as bad as some series of the time in painting the Germans as poor shots, but they do still almost always die to a man, whereas only the odd American is killed. If only the war had been that easy eh?!

That aside, this is a really fine story, well acted and beautifully filmed. It's a 9/10 from me.