Varsovia 1944

I have been reading up on movies on IMDb for many, many years now, but this is the first review that I have ever written. That is because I have not seen a movie depicting history and what actually happened in 1944 during WWII so accurately and movingly, and with great special effects, ever before (and I have seen quite a few).

It is a touching story, sticks to reality and I think that is what makes the biggest impression on the viewer - THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED to the Polish people, in real life. An absolute must-see of the year and in terms of war movies one of the most significant productions ever made.

The now old people who have survived the Warsaw Uprising, say they have never seen a movie as accurate as MIASTO 44 (= "City 44") - watch their moving opinions on YouTube, if you like.

For example, it shows German soldiers and what they were like, as well as the few men who were sent by the Russians in order to 'help' (yea, not really), but in the end created more havoc than anything, since they were simple men never trained for that big a war inside a city (Warsaw was the most destroyed city in WWII, Manila was 2nd).

I hope this review will be helpful to other people - in my opinion this movie is an absolute must-watch, it should be watched by the whole world so that everyone would finally be informed about WHAT those heroic people went through and had to endure. Polish people have a great spirit and always fight for what's right with great ambition, humor and intelligence. They assume other nations are loyal just like they are themselves, which doesn't and obviously DIDN'T always turn out for the best....

GO SEE THIS AMAZING MOVIE and you won't regret it - even if you don't like war movies, it should satisfy you on many other (deeper) levels :))

11 points out of 10 for the producers! wOw and thanks again for making this movie :)

Wow, just wow! The film's visuals are absolutely stunning! This is a good old-fashioned love story with a very strong vengeance element, as well, amidst the horrors of war. Unlike most war films, though, this one does not concentrate on war gore, but there are quite a few disturbing scenes that will make you shudder. The film has great characters with excellent character development, and the acting was great, too. At times the film's unpredictability will make you jolt in your seat. Jozef Pawlowski makes a credible, determined hero with vengeance burning in his heart. This incredible production is easily one of my favorite war films, if not my favorite. The music was awesome.

Jan Komasa's "Warsaw 44" is an audacious and impressive, genre-blending pop-cultural epic war or, as some might put it, anti-war motion picture that hits the nail on the head with unusual and daring vision from an unknown director from Poland.

The story is as simple as it gets. It's just before the summer of 1944 in occupied Warsaw, Poland. Nazi's are retreating slowly leaving the eastern front behind. The Second World War is coming to its end and clearly new order is about to be established. Poland, which had suffered numerous tragic blows of fate in its history, finally has a chance to prove its right for independence.

Stefan (fresh, unobvious and heavy on delicate retro 40's charm Jozef Pawlowski) is the only breadwinner after he lost his father at the beginning of the war. In order to make it and get by with his grief stricken mother and younger brother Jas Stefan unlike his peers is away from getting involved into polish resistance rebellion preparing for the uprising against German occupation. It takes an unfortunate event for Stefan to be forced to join the underground polish Home Army where he meets his old friends and a girl – Alicja (brilliant Zofia Wichlacz). Stefan keeps his new engagement secret from his troubled mother. And then one day surprisingly to everybody involved there comes an order to start the uprising, which is meant to last three days but eventually will lead to a bloody apocalypse.

From the beginning of the movie we experience a visual orgy of different genres mixed together dipped in a salsa gravy of brutal and bloody scenes provocatively shot in a very colorful and even at times fairy-like manner with a little bit of ironical kitsch unlike a typical war cinema has made us to expect. Komasa insanely puts young actors on an emotional roller coaster where things resemble a nightmarish Klimov's "Come and see" crossed with a Disney fairy tale juxtaposing a slo-mo of bullets circling around the kissing lovers with the downpour of blood and guts in one of the most gruesome scenes to be shown in cinema. The way of storytelling makes us follow the characters but surprisingly not because of their psychology, which seems as simple in construction as it gets concerning the fact that we watch people in the middle of unleashed hell where they can only escape or take cover occasionally shoot a bullet at an invisible German enemy. At first you would like to have characters which are more proactive but then - hey! It's war, not another Rambo movie. The characters are tools or goggles through which a viewer can experience the simulation of the world, which does not pretend to be Warsaw from 1944 either. It's more of a dreamy creation, a fantasy, phantom all coming from the director's mind bravely composed with uneasy feeling of disappointment, as if helmer writer wanted to express his doubt whether we would ever let it go and just live together not minding differences in this Babel world.

Whoever is seeking realism, regular narrative war movie and psychologically twisting drama would feel disappointment watching "Warsaw 44" since it's a rare, provocative, ambitious and original gem, a super budget experiment on one of the biggest and most horrifying events in XX century, a bloody opera staged before our damned eyes to show us the fire we lit up ourselves once in a while in the name of hatred and self-destruction.

do you know this feeling when a film is touching you inside, changes something in you, makes you wanna scream ? i guess this one is one of them

i will not tell u much about this film, i never liked to analyze what author wanted to say, what is the message, i wont tell you about the special effect (i guess the best one ever made in any polish production), settings with great detail, great city fight sequences, surprisingly original camera work, no, no I leave all that for experts who know what they say

let me better tell you something that this film changed in me

i read a lot about Warsaw Uprisings (both the Jewish one in Ghetto and Uprising 44 - please Don't MIX THOSE TWO), I watched documentaries, movies, i met some fighters when i was in primary school for some educational talks,

i think i knew ... but i had no idea until i watched this

is this a historic movie ? No really is this a war movie ? I wouldn't say so Love story ? That would be too simple

what is it then you ask ? I guess i will need more time and thoughts to figure it out, what i can tell u now is that it showed me people young people like me, who were faced with unthinkable times, unthinkable evil, and how it transformed them

it is one of those time when a history book fact, some figure, some picture, drags you into it, and leaves your mind damaged, just like it left those people, their city, their dreams

scary

I'm not Polish but my grandfather was a b-17 co-pilot and part of "Operation Frantic" (look it up on Wikipedia) so I have been interested in the Warsaw uprising and in particular the Soviet abetting of the Nazis by intentionally halting to let let the Warsaw resistors be slaughtered, blocking US attempts to aid them, and blocking other Polish resistance from helping as well. Really the way WWII is taught in the US, the absolute continual duplicity of the Soviet Union is utterly ignored, as is the fact that the Soviets were allied with the Nazis at the start of the war, enabling the war to start, for the very purpose of dismembering Poland completely, with Katyn Forest being just one example. And then at the end of the war, as Soviet troops advanced in Eastern Europe they made certain o do everything they could to insure as many Polish anti-Nazi fighters that might not be soviet controlled were killed.

On the film itself, Warsaw '44 is highly immersive and well done from a technical point of view showing the kinetic and hyperviolent nature of 20th century urban warfare. As far as the human interest aspect, yes it is a bit overly melodramatic but not overwhelmingly so.

Lastly the top review at the moment says this is an anti-war film. It thankfully is not. Yes a lot of warfare is oppressive, but a lot is a bout liberation. Without the US civil war we would have had slavery a lot longer. Without the US joining WWII to help liberate Europe, the the choices would have been the twin evils of Nazism and communism. Without the US going to war against Japan, both Korea and China, would have been slave states of the Japanese empire. Without the Korean war, S. Korea would have looked like N. Korea the past 65 years. In fact if not for the ancient Greeks going to war against the Persian hordes we have to wonder if a big part of Europe would look like the backward mess that is Iran has been and is.