The Grey Zone

Rating:
Summary: i think the movie is good....
Review: but also gross. i don't think i'll watch it again.

Rating:
Summary: Simply awful
Review: There is absolutely no reason in the world to see this movie. If you're interested in the subject of the story, I understand the movie was based on a book. Read that. There was no discernible justification for the production or release of this film, other than to give its cast and crew a paying gig. If you need to see a movie about the Holocaust, check out "Life Is Beautiful." At least there is more than a shred of hope to that film. "The Grey Zone" is nothing short of depressing. It has a few Hollywood weirdos like Harvey Keitel, Steve Buschemi and David Arquette in it, and a desperate portrayal of hopelessness by Mira Sorvino. If you simply must see images of people (men, women, and children) being gassed, shot in the back of the head (so many men and women are shown being executed in this way you will lose count) and then having their bodies shoved into furnaces, then by all means buy this DVD. Otherwise, don't waste time or money on this film which is totally bereft of inspiration. The only reason I bothered writing a review of it is to discourage you from wasting your time!

Rating:
Summary: Whatever
Review: I don't know. For some reason, this film didn't "grab" me. It didn't really delve into the characters psyche very well. I normally love any movie about the holocaust. I wish they would release Schindler's List soon.

Rating:
Summary: Major Disappointment
Review: It is very rare that I write a review of a film, mainly due to the fact that many of my thoughts and opinions are already stated in previous reviews. I often feel that overstating these opinions is pointless. However, with this film, I will make an exception, just to reinforce my viewpoint.
I actually had my hopes up (well, at least a little bit) for this film. I am a bit of a history buff, the story seemed very interesting, and there is a core of solid actors to be viewed.
Ladies and gentleman, what could have been an intriguing, disturbing, and thought-provoking movie has become a total waste of nearly two hours of my time.
The #1 problem with this film is the dialogue. There are quite a few scenes (particularly scenes with the small groups of "high ranking" Jewish), that I felt came straight from some "B" movie. Basic conversation between the characters was portrayed terribly. The dialogue seemed very forced, very poorly written, and very poorly acted. With Steve Buscemi, Harvey Keitel, and Mira Sorvino being a part of this, I find it hard to believe that it could be so bad, but somehow, it is. They all feel very out-of-place in this film. One contributing factor to the poor dialogue was, as stated by others before me, the F-word being overused by seemingly middle-aged men from the Northern U.S. These men are supposed to be Polish and Hungarian Jews, not smart-aleks from Rhode Island!! In my humble opinion, I believe that there can only be one person to "blame" for this, and that person is Tim Blake Nelson, the writer/director. I don't know much of his work, but I now know enough to realize that his future work isn't worth my time.
Another frustrating part of this movie is the audio, which has also been complained about prior to this review. It is very poorly made; being very low at volume and often times feeling, again, like a "B" movie.
Reviewers have often commented that this film is difficult to watch and that it is "disturbing". The history involved in regard to what happened is certainly difficult to take, and of course, to watch. However, in my opinion, this film does very little to express or withdraw these emotions. Unfortunately, in simpleton terms, this film is CHEESY. There are so many other Holocaust related films that do a much better job of portraying the horror and despair, why waste your time on this poorly written one?
I recommend that you don't.

Rating:
Summary: The Music
Review: I'm interested in the soundtrack of the movie. Will it be available?

Thanks

Rating:
Summary: Not the "feel good movie of the year"
Review: I watched The Grey Zone yesterday and am still feeling quite disturbed.

First things first, Steve Buscemi is one of my favorite actors but I'm not sure he quite fit in in The Grey Zone. I also like Harvey Keitel but was not really feeling him in his role. I am assuming we are all supposed to pretend the actors were Jewish or Hungarian or German, etc. Then why is it some characters were given accents and others weren't? And like everyone else who has reviewed the movie, I feel the "F" word was way over used. It definitely took away from the overall authenticity of the time period in which the movie took place. It seemed almost as if the characters were hanging out on the corner somewhere in NYC, arguing over a bad card game.

Aside from the above, The Grey Zone succeeded in freaking me out beyond belief. The live people going in to the gas chambers only to come out dead, shoveled into the fire and dumped into the river are images that will be with me for a while. The scene in which they painted the gas chamber walls had the most impact on me. Imagine them painting over the mess the people left behind as they were gassed to death? The musical score was quite perfect. Sad, dark, bleak.

The story was interesting and the acting was decent enough. Do not not watch this is you're not ready to be disturbed for at least the rest of the day (or night).

Rating:
Summary: Lots of Grey Matter
Review: The Grey Zone is the most graphic and realistic Holocaust film I have seen yet. It is perhaps the first Holocaust film I have seen to show large amounts of dead bodies from the gas chamber, people at work in the ovens burning the dead bodies, and finally the ashes and powder of the dead bodies being scooped up by a shovel, and tossed in the back of a truck where it will be taken away and dumped into a river. And its not just a case of removing the dead bodies from the gas chamber, but cleaning up the walls of the gas chamber as well. The human body does not take to poisonous gas very well, and the victims of gas tended to vomit on the walls and floor. And I assume on each other. It also tells a little known fact--to me anyway--of life in the Concentration Camp. A group of prisoners were given key jobs of assisting the guards and the doctors, and were in return rewarded with food, wine, and a comparatively easy life--at least until they were deemed unnecessary, and it was their turn to go to the gas chamber. This period on the job lasted about four months at the most. All of the other holocaust films may show people entering a gas chamber, but that is all we see. Here we can associate live people, and later their dead bodies, as if we are watching before and after shots. For realism, it is this fact alone that makes this film worth owning.

On the other hand, there is much about this film that makes it questionable as a keeper. It tries so hard to present a factual and accurate film about the holocaust, that all of its energies are spent bolstering one aspect, yet it totally ignores some other area. The big turn off was the very liberal use of the "F" word. Its not to question whether this word was in use or not during WWII, but hearing the word used so repeatedly in a Concentration Camp seems odd. One of the keys to survival is submission to the guards, and this is done by not looking at them directly, but by responding to them while looking at the ground. What need would Jewish prisoners have for a liberal and confrontational use of the "F" word? You don't survive in a Concentration Camp by being confrontational. In this movie they use it on themselves a lot. Instead of turning to each other for support, they almost verbally trash each other. The reason given in this movie is that as part of the history of Auschwitz, these prisoners managed to pull off an armed revolt that result in the blowing up of one of the crematoriums, and the arguments revolved around the best way to do this. In real life, prisoners of Buchenwald, for example did manage to smuggle things out of the camp, and it was a very risky, but coordinated effort. These Jewish prisoners in "The Grey Zone" did not seem very much like they were working together very well. Yet, they managed to stay in top condition, ad could run like the wind when they had to.

Another thing that seemed kind of odd about the film, is that the prisoners did not exactly look like they had been starving. They were not overly thin, and one man looked like, if he had not lost weight, that he may have actually gained weight. He would have made a nice football player on the inmates vs guards football game. You can blame this on a good life of food and wine as part of the plus of being a special aid to the doctors and guards, but they only had that job for a maximum of four months, and it wasn't likely given to them the moment they stepped off the trains. This fact, combined with the use of the "F" distracted me from where I actually was. I was perhaps not in a concentration camp after all, but maybe a penal colony in the "Aliens 3" movie. That was the impression I got. The same type of shouting went on in the "Alien 3" movie as people tried to come up with a plan to kill the terrible creature that had acid for blood. Both films had that same type of claustrophobic feel to it, and parts of both films could have been interchangeable. When I wasn't seeing the gas chamber or the ovens of Auschwitz, the dark sets could just as easily have been from some other futuristic metallic style space movie. Even The Jewish prisoners had a rough look to their faces that was not brought on by life at Auschwitz, but looked as if they belonged in some futuristic penal colony. The bottom line is that a prisoner in a Concentration Camp is still a prisoner, and the last thing he should be doing is threatening the Camp's Commandant. You'd think. But it happens here with no reprisals. His body should reflect some degree of starvation, and his attitude should be one of greater submission. You'd think.

There is also in this film a great movie cliche that after all these years, Hollywood has never really learned how to deal with. Its the whole idea of two different races being able to communicate with each other quite easily--usually in English. You have to ask yourself in real life, how many Polish or Italian Jews took the time to actually learn German, and how many German soldiers actually took the time to learn Hebrew. For some reason, what Hollywood has done the most, and what is done here, is to give the English speaking German officer a German accent, so that he says, "vork," instead of "work." This somewhat thankless job was given to actor Harvey Keitel--you may remember him from "U-571" as the First Officer. He was also the policeman in "Thelma And Louise." Keitel does as good a job as can be hoped for, but why don't they give the actors playing Jews Jewish accents? The makers of this film spend so much time making Keitel sound German, while the very prisoners he is supposed to be in charge of look like they just came back from a big Thanksgiving dinner. You'd think there would be something someone could have done to thin them up a little bit--put fake rib cages on them, or something. There is kind of an imbalance here.

One question, the film asks, although not directly, is, "what would you do?" If you were sent to a concentration camp and given the cushy job of being a doctor's assistant would you take it? While your neighbors and friends are starving, you get the pick of the best meat, bread, and an entire bottle of wine for yourself. You also have minimal supervision. No slave labor work. Your only job description involves essentially lying to your fellow Jews. As they are being lead to the gas chamber, you tell them over and over that they are going to take a shower, and to remember where they hung their clothes, as they will need them after the shower. Or, as a doctor's assistant, you tell the patients that the doctor wants to examine them for general health, when you know full well he will be dropping acid in their eyes, or cutting off body parts without anesthesia as part of his human experiments. This was a big part of life in the Concentration Camps, and many Jews justified their behavior, as they would do anything to survive. Its part of what saves this film from being a throw away.

If you want to watch a movie about the Holocaust, there are better films out there overall. But its hard to beat the scenes that depict the gas chamber, and the ovens. Its like nice prime rib dinner. You can enjoy the meat once you have sliced away the fat. But by then your 12 ounce steak is down to 7 ounces.

Rating:
Summary: Definately over rated.
Review: This DVD was a big disappointment, especially after having read such highly rated customer reviews. The quality of the DVD itself immediately takes away from the content. It claims to be Dolby Digital 5.1, however the sound quality is very poor. I had to turn the volume up so high, that speaker hiss was constantly present, just in order to make out what they were saying. I even went as far as to take the DVD to a local major name electronics store and ran it in several DVD players there....same problem... ... poor sound quality.

The story itself, especially the fact that it is true, should have made this a very compelling drama. The story is quite remarkable. However weak character introduction, bland acting, occasionally poor cinematography, unconvincing character portrayals, combined with the overall poor quality of sound, make this one a loser.

You will get a good laugh at Harvey Keitel's attempt at a German accent. Scenes where characters are supposed to be speaking Hungarian (but are speaking english), also detract from the film. For example, in one scene two camp members are speaking to the camp commadant's (Keitel's)....in German (which for the viewer's sake throughout the film is English....understandable). They then turn to each other and speak more in English, upon which Keitel yell's at them to speak German and not Hungarian. No time to teach the actors a few sentences for the scene in the native tounge of the character's they were portraying? This one has "B" movie stamped all over it.

The high reviews of this one make me wonder if anyone else who saw this has seen "Schindler's List" or the 1978 TV Mini-series "Holocaust" --> (which is supposed to be eventually re-released on DVD), or more recently "The Pianist". All of which are outstanding and very convincing portrayals of this dark period of man's history.

Rating:
Summary: Alien 3 meets The Holocaust
Review: What a nightmare. The producers wanted to create a claustraphobic feel to this movie, and they certainly have done that. Unlike other Holocaust films that I have seen, the gas chambers and ovens are shown working in full force instead of merely being hinted at. We get the experience that we are there instead of only reading about it. And the film gives added insight into the life of those who "helped" the Germans, but one wonders that even with a short life expectency it might have still been better to deny the luxury as a symbol of protest.

The biggest turnoff to this movie was the conatant use of the "F" word. Whether it may or may not have been used to the degree that it was, it gave me the impression that the concentration camp victims were nothing but a bunch of godless men, more suited to the penal colony of Aliens 3. The constant use of the "F" word was a distraction, and I think there were Holocaust victims who did hang on to their dignity as best they could. Perhaps the Holocaust made athiests out of some Jews, but it also made believers out of some athiests, and this fact was grossly missing from this movie. Where was faith in Auschwitz? It was there, too, but so often Hollywood wants to present soldiers and others as being nothing more than animals whose only pleasure in life comes from raping the women and killing the men--just watch "Dances With Wolves," and "The Outlaw Josy Wales." And according to this movie there were no decent Jews and no decent Germans. Still, the Holocaust was a nightmare, and this film captures it very well, and also shows how in spite of the demeaning circumstances, there was resistance.

Rating:
Summary: Grey Zone
Review: Yes, many parts of this video are highly rated and very well done. But I am distressed by the use of so much "modern American jargon", such as the constant use of the "f--" word in the camp setting. I may be wrong, but I do not think Hungarians and Poles used such language that has now become now a by-word among our "younger generation". Using this "f..." word does not make emphasis! Rather, it reflects one's education, breeding, good manners, etc. And there were many camp inmates who continued praying under all those conditions, who would not have used such language and suffered just as much. Would they be embarrassed to hear such talk? I also think the portrayal of the camp inmates would have been more realistic if some of the main actors used some Polish and Hungarians (with subtitles) in a few critical places. German was used that way, but this is a minor point. I was disappointed by the use of modern swear word language that reminded me of "Fargo" (where this language was appropriate). Yet the video is stupendous. I just think it could have been better if the actors had really acted and spoke like their counterparts would have at the time. The Jewish Doctor in the film/video DID accomplish that! Come on Hollywood----let's eliminate some of this coarse talk that many of us do not use now and did not use THEN, and let's have viewers seeing these historic renditions learn more about the people of the era. I have distant relatives who were killed at Auschwitz, and yet I did not know of this upraising. Important film. But, needless to say, all those dead bodies were very authentic when laying on carts to be thrown into fires. Why did the portrayed and living camp inmates need to use modern slang? I think one calls this a "mixed review".