Evoking a similar scene in John Boorman's wonderful World War II memoir, Hope and Glory, a stricken British bomber crashes just outside a small Dutch town. The next morning, 13-year-old Michiel (Martijn Lakemeier) and a friend run over to play in the wreckage until German soldiers chase them off. So much for any resemblance to real life, as Martin Koolhoven's tepidly suspenseful coming-of-age thriller, though based on a true story, devolves into formula. By chance the impulsive Michiel gets a chance to help rescue the surviving pilot, and tired of the appeasement tactics of his father the mayor (Raymond Thiry), and inspired by the resistance bravado of his Uncle Ben (Yorick van Wageningen), he commits himself to the mission. To his credit, Koolhoven humanizes some of the enemy soldiers, but despite a monochromatic palette depicting winter bleakness, he fails to build an atmosphere of urgency or menace to undercut the sometimes corny predictability.
Related:
Review: Meredith Monk: Inner Voice, Review: Shutter Island, Review: Waiting For Armageddon, More 
- Review: Meredith Monk: Inner Voice
After studying music and dance at Sarah Lawrence College in the '60s, Meredith Monk was struck by the idea that the voice could be like the body — it could move, it could have characters and landscapes, it could alter time.
- Review: Shutter Island
I read Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island , a 336-page throat-grabbing mystery thriller, in two nearly sleepless nights.
- Review: Waiting For Armageddon
Much scarier than 2012 is this documentary about the death grip that fundamentalist religious groups have on American politics.
- Review: Neil Young Trunk Show
If a Neil Young neophyte can find himself rocking in a cinema seat to the spirited, soulful music performed in this second of a rumored triptych of Demme-directed, Young-starring concert documentaries, long-time fans are bound to break their armrests.
- Review: A Matter Of Size
Director duo Sharon Maymon and Erez Tadmor have fashioned a look at a group of blue-collar Israeli men and how they came to accept who they are.
- Review: Marwencol
It takes a village to save a mind.
- Review: Defiance
Edward Zwick directs the true-ish tale of the Bielskis.
- Review: Red Cliff
Hong Kong auteur John Woo hit commercial and artistic pay dirt in the US with Face/Off , his loopy Nicolas Cage/John Travolta neo-noir, but once he’d directed Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible II , was there anywhere left to go?
- Interview: Ed Zwick
On January 16, director Ed Zwick's Defiance storms theaters with its harrowing tale of the freedom-fighting Bielski brothers, who retreat to the forests of Belarus to protect an ever-growing brigade of Jewish refugees and wage relentless guerilla war against the Nazis.
- Review: The Strip
In lieu of Steve Carell’s hopelessly inept and earnest manager, we have his creepier duplicate, Glenn. Instead of the boorish brown-noser played by Rainn Wilson, there’s the more obnoxious Rick.
- Review: A Single Man
Christopher Isherwood published his novel about a middle-aged homosexual grieving for a lost lover, the frank depiction of gay desire scandalized some readers.
- Less
Topics:
Reviews
, Movies, Germany, World War II, More
, Movies, Germany, World War II, film, memoir, John Boorman, holland, Dutch, Less
