Because of the extreme importance of the matter, I am really uncomfortable to saying this movie is quite a misfire. It could have been so much better, it should have been better.
Directing and editing are very confusing: you are not allowed to easily understand the settings or the whole post-war background, there's no difference between the fighting age and the reconstruction time. You can't appreciate any shades that suggeste you are in Russia, England or Poland. The whole movie seems to take place in the same few exteriors. The assembly rythm is terrible: the editing is very boring, so slow that loses all the tension and the final suspense (there's none!), some scenes unnecessary. Nor it helps in taking time to get deep in the characterization of the personages: their portraits are very flat, their evolving in the storyline and the following awareness of human monstrosity (in war and politics both) are superficial. Main character is tedious and pale, as well as being not quite an eagle...
Because, maybe, the production tried to avoid volgar spectacularization of the massacres, I guess, it eventually ends up to minimize the real tragedy: the movie turns out to depersonalize victims of Katyn, merely corps, lack of scenes, lack of details... so wrong!
The acting is also quite poor and Michael Gambon's performance is completely wasted in two minor scenes...somebody would ask please why in hell he accepted this part...again: bad final editing, quite sure, and not such a good screenplay.
Pretty enough are the cinematography and the original soundtracks. Good basic plot, shaking movie structure and timing.
In the end, all these aspects stop you to have any kind of "transfert" or to reach a deep empathy that the movie should have inspired.
Its greatest fault is the lack of passion and heart: the claim and the reckoning of one of the worst slaughters in the 20th century, I feel, should have been shouted and screamed loudly like a running train to the truth, instead you hear just a whisper.
You would have liked to be moved instead of simply Learning an excruciating truth....but, sometimes, could it be enough?
