Instrument of War

When I decided to watch this movie, I got the impression it would be a low-budget B-movie, which would have many things wrong and suffer from bad acting.

Well, nothing was further from the truth, Although the first moments of the movie confirmed my suspicions - a plane was shown which was very obviously low-quality CGI - it was the pretty decent acting that caught my attention. I therefore decided to watch it for some more time, and boy, what a good decision this was.

Based on true events that took place as of June 1944, this movie takes place in a POW-camp of the German Luftwaffe, i.e. A so-called STALAG. I was most amazed by the pretty solid acting and the attention to detail.

I often irritate myself on wrong war uniforms, wrong types of weapons or even insignia. The director of this movie seemed to however have the same feeling. Because it is clear that much attention has been put to in these details. As such, this contributed big-time in getting the right "atmosphere", of seeing events that could really have taken place. Even the camp - likely the most difficuly to reconstruct - looked pretty "WW2 like".

Overall, I was glad that I decided to completely watch this movie. Because the true events that were at the basis of the movie, made this is good watch. It even raised a controversial point, like why Allied pilots had to bomb many civilian targets, which made me immediately remind the firebombings of e.g. Hamburg, Dresden or Tokyo.

With respect to the level of acting and character-development, I already mentioned that the acting is pretty solid. Especially interested were the way in which we learnt how both the german guard - whom was directly responsible for the group of POW's featured in this movie - and the english speaking camp officer that was also responsible for the translation between camp commander and prisoners. I think more could have been gained by focussing even more on these two german soldiers. But let me be honest, the movie on this aspect already far exceeded my expectations.

Concluding, I found this movie to deserve a score of 6.4/10, resulting in an IMDb rating of 6 stars. I had to think twice on whether this movie did not deserve a score that was somewhat higher, but that would make it a 7-star rated movie. And I think the movie did not have sufficient substance to make it that far. But let me be clear, this movie is a very decent watch.

I don't understand the poor ratings for this. Sure if you're looking for something with all the action of Saving Private Ryan then you won't find that here but this is a beautiful film and it is the message you should take from it. Someone has rated this a 3, only watching 30 minutes of it and mocking it for being about making a violin. This is a true story and it warms my heart that in those desperate times this is something they did just to get through.

The movie was pretty draggy but had some good characters. The cooler was very hard on some to the point they went nuts which seemed a bit extreme for the amount of time spent locked up. It would have been great to find out what happened to the other main characters after the war but we were left guessing. Time went by but we never knew how much between the different major story points. It is not clear what happened when the Russians showed up and what about the retreating Germans. Lots of missed opportunities to flush out the story but you can do only so much in 90 minutes. The movie did end up having a happy ending.

This film obviously isn't a big budget Hollywood blockbuster, but I was pleasantly surprised how much it held my attention. It's not up there with The Great Escape, but still a decent WWII movie. All sides suffer during a war and that certainly comes across.The 'instrument' referred to in the title is a violin, so this movie would appeal to anyone who plays one. The acting is okay and the script could have been better. A sincere attempt at showing life in a prisoner of war camp under Nazi rule. Worth a watch.

A true story of imprisoned WWII allies shot down over Germany doing what they can to keep going in the PoW camp. Nicely and simply told, and very moving. A must see for any musicians - especially violinists.