The Poet (2007)

I admit, when I first viewed this movie (Under the American title "Hearts of War")I didn't think much of it. While I love forbidden romances and find the happenings of WWII fascinating, I thought the plot moved too quickly for my liking. For instance, I would've liked for Oskar and Rachel's relationship to blossom a bit; it just all felt very rushed. But I recently watched it again and came to appreciate it and even classify it as one of my favorites. The wilds of Ontario is convincing as Polish countryside and I appreciate that the actors use real accents as opposed to American/Canadian ones (see "Valkyrie"). That bugs me; the films always lose something without the proper accents. All in all, Oskar and Rachel's love set against the backdrop of the Nazi invasion of Poland kept me riveted. I was surprise the baby was killed; children usually survive movies like this. The only real complaint I have is the ending. What happened?! Did they get out? And how?

After reading some of the bad feedback from other reviews, I decided to watch it anyway. Unfortunately, they were all spot on. Its rather a shame too, as the it 'looked' quite authentic with some decent effort made towards costume and setting. Even the cinematography was at a decent standard. However, everything else was pretty bad, terrible even. The main thing that let it down was the bad script which led to some appalling dialogue and acting at times. Some scenes are laughable its that bad. The funniest scene been at 43 minutes when a boom mic appears in shot for about 10 seconds. I've given it a 3 simply for the mise en scene.

The Poet is a surprisingly poor to mediochre movie, trying hard to jerk a tear. 'Schmalz' describes it well - a sort of 'Fiddler on the Roof' without the charm. It looks thoroughly naive and unsubtle, as if written by a 19-year-old. It even shows the technological innovation of a 'left-handed' bolt action on a rifle. The lisping pseudo-German English dialogue was pointless and distracting to the point of trying hard to send up "Allo, allo!". Even Roy Scheider played a stereotyped rabbi - I expected "Oy, vey!!" at any moment. The battle scenes give paintballing a bad name, with more than a hint of Star Wars special effects. A waste of a good budget. The idea of lovers from opposite political poles might have worked in a re-setting of Romeo & Juliet on the eastern front, but Shakespeare this wasn't.

I am being generous by giving this movie a 4 out of 10. Please don't be fooled by the "9.3" score it currently has. You can thank the cast and crew of the movie which are obviously rating their movie on IMDb. The only reason this movie gets a 4, is because of that cute girl that came out in that horrible movie "My daughter's secret."I am being generous by giving this movie a 4 out of 10. Please don't be fooled by the "9.3" score it currently has. You can thank the cast and crew of the movie which are obviously rating their movie on IMDb. The only reason this movie gets a 4, is because of that cute girl that came out in that horrible movie "My daughter's secret."