Oorlogswinter

Aristides-2 and malcolmgw have already mentioned some of the holes in the plot that you can drive a truck through, such as Jack's leg being broken and rotting away one day but being magically healed when he clambers across a river along the underside of a bridge on the very next day.

Aside from absurd details like this, the historical premise of the movie is unrealistic. The events portrayed are supposed to have happened in January 1945, at a time when the Germans were running from the Russians in the East and mobilized their last reserves of manpower, weaponry, and fuel for the futile Battle of the Bulge in the West.

And yet this movie will have us believe that, just then, a whole company or so of German soldiers - all young men in their prime, well- fed, well-armed and -motorized, spic and span - are tasked with playing cat and mouse all day long with a bunch of hapless villagers in the Dutch countryside? And that, with 5 years of battlefield experience, none of them can hit a standing target at 50 paces?

I get that the makers of movies are more interested in human virtues and morals than in historical facts, but it nevertheless detracts from a move when the historical background is so poorly treated.