La promesa de Irene

"Irena's Vow" tells the story of a courageous Polish girl, Irena Gut Opdyke, who gets caught in a street roundup to be used as a laborer for the Nazis, who have taken over Poland. Irena, through her cunning and beauty, ends up as a housekeeper for an SS officer at a new villa, which was previously owned by a Jewish family. Through her humanity and cunning ways, Irena is able to rescue and house 11 Jewish workers from her previous place of work and transport them to the new Villa, where she hides them in the cellar and then another secret room, all under the roof of the SS Officer. To reveal any more would be considered a spoiler. I found this production very well acted and directed and location shots in Poland were very effective. The film lacked the emotional punch of a "Schindler's List" or "One Life", but the film is worth seeing and learning about another heroic person who endangered their own life to help Jewish victims from the death camps. For this, Irena was given the title of Righteous One in Israel, for saving Jewish lives.

I have always been a huge supporter and sympathizer of oppressed people all over the world. I will never understand any person's intense hatred and extreme obsession to hurt another based solely on one's race. Thankfully, on the flip side of this evil, we are also inspired by decent people who have displayed heroic acts of courage, morals and good conscience to protect victims in these horrific circumstances. I was immediately drawn into this movie and captivated until the credits rolled by. Sophie Nelisse and the entire cast deliver phenomenal performances. This movie is fraught with drama and suspense and I can't recommend it highly enough!

Irena is a Polish woman caught in the early stages of Nazi occupation, enlisted to work for the new regime, who after witness to the horrors unleashed against the local Jews, decides to do everything in her power to save the victims. That is her vow. And this is her astounding true story.

Presented more as a theatre piece than movie, "Irena's Vow" seldom moves outdoors, save for a few market square scenes, focusing mainly on interiors, where Irena keeps mansion for a high ranking officer, and keeps a group of Jews hidden in the cellar.

The grit, grime and scuffy realities of war are absent here, as everything focuses on the characters and the carefully orchestrated set pieces. The clean and simple play presentation makes for a distancing film experience, which slowly dissolves as the story picks up the pace. And the story is the star here.

Scrambling to avoid detection under the enemy's roof, Irena shows cool resolve, clever problem solves, and total dedication to her cause. The surface sheen of the movie which never digs far enough to get a good grip on the characters, is finally broken with the post film credits, that feature photos and historic summaries of the aftermath. Then it finally hits home.

• hipCRANK.

I fully confess to doing a poor job of keeping up with current film releases over the past several years, as my knowledge has mostly been ad hoc, based on what's showing up on my streaming services. I'd heard nothing of this film until seeing it on the carte on Showtime a couple of nights ago, knew almost the same about any of the parties involved. I also rarely write notes on IMDB but am drawn in this instance in light of the undeservedly mediocre overall score, skewed by one review which seems ridiculous in all regards to me. So, onto the film itself. As others have noted, the acting and production values can be uneven, but what a story! There's more than a bit of Schindler's List here, but this is even more extraordinary, with the protagonist having anything but a privileged position. Other have recapped the plot well; I won't do that here, but as impressive this is as a yarn, what's more so is the moral complexity and humanity of almost all of the characters, even the Germans, and the gimlet eyed vision of the filmmaker that, although they're not the primary bad guys here, the Soviets have almost as much to answer for as the Nazis for their actions during this time, very much putting the lie to the "Good Fight" misnomer (as so many other things, entirely unrelated to this film, like Japanese-American internment, our bombing of civilian populations in Germany and Japan, indifference to the plight of European Jews, etc., etc, do too). I'm often moved by great cinema, but I must admit getting a bit more than teary watching the follow up stories of the real life characters which roll during the final credits (don't miss this!). This nets out for me somewhere between an 8 and a 9, but it gets the benefit of the doubt for the greatness of the story and the need to bump up the collective score here. I note that, while this movie isn't Polish, it's set there, making for a duo of two of the best films of the past years I've seen along with "Forgotten Love". Highly recommended.

I've seen a lot of WW II movies. I've never seen one quite like this. "Irena's Vow" is the story of a real person, Irena Gut, a teenager when WW II began. She was a virgin, from a loving, well to do family. The war began, and she was gang raped, beaten, and left for dead by Red Army soldiers, famous for their rapes across Europe.

Nazis murdered her father. Her family split up She was alone and desperate. She never gave in to self pity, but dedicated herself to saving Jews from extermination. Her self sacrifice, her courage, and her ingenuity put the rest of us to shame. Holy Cow, what a woman.

Sophie Nelisse is almost supernatural in her ability to inhabit the young Irena Gut -- the real Irena's daughter said as much. Nelisse has said that she is not a Method actor, and she was able to shake off the difficulties of the part as soon as she heard "Cut." That's amazing.

I strongly recommend this film. Again, I can't thnk of anything else quite like it.