Oorlogswinter

It's important to know 'Winter in Wartime' is not an action war movie. This is a drama set during the Second World War. The film revolves around a young boy, Michiel, who decides to help a soldier, Jack, who finds himself beyond enemy lines after his plane was shot down.

Michiel is a nosy youngster, and his notion to help the soldier might be attributed to this characteristic. It is disconcerting to see such a young boy lie with ease. It was also interesting seeing him become increasingly more possessive over Jack - especially once Michiel's sister, Erica, becomes involved. Erica is a nurse, who sees to Jack's wounds.

The film deals with so many different emotions, and the performances from the entire cast is really good. This is not your typical war movie, and might disappoint action buffs for lack of action, but it certainly delivers on an emotional and moral level. Martijn Lakemeier is excellent as Michiel, who carries the film.

14 year-old Michiel lives in the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation in the latter part of WWII. Although he's still only a kid, he happens upon a downed British flier and bravely decides to help him--even though the expedient thing would have been to stay out of this. To complicate things, Michiel's father is the local mayor--and a man who has long tried to appease his Nazi overlords. What is the boy to do?

The film is excellent in every way. Martijn Lakemeier did a great job in the leading role and the film was a quality production throughout. I also appreciated it because the film was very difficult to predict. Sure, you know the Nazis would lose and the war would be over in only a few months--but there were so many twists and turns in the film that it kept me guessing. It helped that this was not a 'happily ever after' sort of family film but a gritty one that was about a boy who needed to grow up very, very fast and make some very adult things. Well worth seeing and a decent film for the family despite its R-rating.

"Dirk should never have got you involved." After 14 year old Dutch boy Michael (Lakemeier) finds a wounded British soldier during WWII he has to pick a side, resistance or appease the Nazi's. This is a very good coming of age story. It shows how a 14 year old in a war zone is forced to grow up earlier then he should and how he deals with hiding the fact that he is helping "the enemy" from everyone, even his family. The title of the movie is deceiving, to me anyway. There is not a typical war movie, in the fact that there is no actual fighting. It is set around a boy and the part of the war that we don't usually see. This is a very good movie, but this is another one that is not for everyone. It is a little slow moving in parts, but as a foreign movie that is expected. The acting by the boy is very very good and at 17 years old looks to have a long career ahead of him. Overall, a very, very well done movie that deserves to be seen. One of the most dramatic war movies I have seen. I like it. I give it a B.

Would I watch it again? - I don't think I would, but it was good.

*Also try - Enemy At The Gates

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.

This has always been a movie I expected to like but never one I expected to love. I don't know, the movie always seemed a bit too low-budget and narrow with its story, characters and settings and overdone with its drama and action. Dutch movies tend to be told a but clumsily at times, especially when its also involving some action. Most Dutch film-makers really don't know how to handle action but luckily Martin Koolhoven isn't a director who suffers from this and he also really got almost all of the other stuff right as well.

It's really one great and slick looking movie. It has got a great visual style, that it manages to maintain throughout its entire running time. Looking at this movie you really wouldn't think that it only cost a few millions to make, which really isn't a lot of money in the movie business, not even for a Dutch movie of this size and caliber. They really did an excellent job with its budget and besides its visual look, it also convincingly takes you back to 1945 wartime- and winter struck Holland. Director Martin Koolhoven even subtly managed to put in his love for spaghetti westerns in this movie (which is probably also the reason why it stars Dan van Husen in it) with some of the sequences and camera-work, without it being obvious or distracting for the casual viewer.

And the movie does really feature some great camera-work by Guido van Gennep, that doesn't only just capture the mood and atmosphere of the movie well but also makes the movie more dynamic with its movements and set-up. Same can be said for the nimble editing by Job ter Burg, which doesn't prevent the movie from having some pacing issues in it though.

But guess you could really 'blame' the fact that this movie is based on a novel for that. The story doesn't always flow well or moves along fast enough and it has some characters that more or less get neglected, as the movie moves along. This is all because it's based on a popular and well known novel by Jan Terlouw, which is 164 pages long and of course features way too much stuff to all effectively put into one movie. This is something basically all movies based off on novels suffer from, so you can't really blame the film-makers, though I still wished they would had treated some of its characters better and more interestingly. Such as for instance the Schafter and Auer characters, that had far more potential in them and could had really added something more to the story, its themes and the depth of it all.

But that are about the only things that could had potentially made this movie an even better one, fore it does basically everything else right.

It's not just a typical Dutch movie that is involving WW II. It's more one that is somewhere between a serious and heavy drama as well as a tense and engrossing one, in a more thriller kind of way. What the movie also does well is appealing to both a younger and older crowd. This isn't specifically just a movie kids or adults, it's one for all ages.

But the movie still could not had worked out as well as it did, if it weren't for its cast. For this movie it was very important that they had a good young main lead in it and with Martijn Lakemeier they really succeeded with this. But basically everyone's performance in this movie is real good. It also features some big and well known names in it, most notably Yorick van Wageningen. Though it needs to be said that he has been working and living in the United States for so long now, that he has actually grown a thick accent when speaking Dutch. Luckily it doesn't ever get that bad or too distracting and people who don't speak or understand Dutch will not be bothered by this at all of course.

This (almost Oscar nominated) movie surpassed my expectations really!

8/10

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