User reviews

It's a little stylised in parts but otherwise this Polish production is very well made. It tells the story of a group of young adults who join in the Warsaw uprising of 1944.

Fully expecting it to be a two day, patriotic adventure, with the Russians (allies of their allies) at the outskirts of the city, they attack the Germans with little more than small arms and a few grenades. But.. the Russians didn't advance and, perhaps more importantly, the Germans didn't retreat.

What followed was the absolute destruction of Warsaw, the slaughter of 200,000 of its 900,000 inhabitants and the imprisonment of all but 1,000 of the rest of them.

It's gritty and violent and sometimes even disturbing, but it's also a part of history that needs telling and seeing. Watch it for that reason if nothing else. 7.5/10.

Jan Komasa's "Warsaw 44" is an audacious and impressive, genre-blending pop-cultural epic war or, as some might put it, anti-war motion picture that hits the nail on the head with unusual and daring vision from an unknown director from Poland.

The story is as simple as it gets. It's just before the summer of 1944 in occupied Warsaw, Poland. Nazi's are retreating slowly leaving the eastern front behind. The Second World War is coming to its end and clearly new order is about to be established. Poland, which had suffered numerous tragic blows of fate in its history, finally has a chance to prove its right for independence.

Stefan (fresh, unobvious and heavy on delicate retro 40's charm Jozef Pawlowski) is the only breadwinner after he lost his father at the beginning of the war. In order to make it and get by with his grief stricken mother and younger brother Jas Stefan unlike his peers is away from getting involved into polish resistance rebellion preparing for the uprising against German occupation. It takes an unfortunate event for Stefan to be forced to join the underground polish Home Army where he meets his old friends and a girl – Alicja (brilliant Zofia Wichlacz). Stefan keeps his new engagement secret from his troubled mother. And then one day surprisingly to everybody involved there comes an order to start the uprising, which is meant to last three days but eventually will lead to a bloody apocalypse.

From the beginning of the movie we experience a visual orgy of different genres mixed together dipped in a salsa gravy of brutal and bloody scenes provocatively shot in a very colorful and even at times fairy-like manner with a little bit of ironical kitsch unlike a typical war cinema has made us to expect. Komasa insanely puts young actors on an emotional roller coaster where things resemble a nightmarish Klimov's "Come and see" crossed with a Disney fairy tale juxtaposing a slo-mo of bullets circling around the kissing lovers with the downpour of blood and guts in one of the most gruesome scenes to be shown in cinema. The way of storytelling makes us follow the characters but surprisingly not because of their psychology, which seems as simple in construction as it gets concerning the fact that we watch people in the middle of unleashed hell where they can only escape or take cover occasionally shoot a bullet at an invisible German enemy. At first you would like to have characters which are more proactive but then - hey! It's war, not another Rambo movie. The characters are tools or goggles through which a viewer can experience the simulation of the world, which does not pretend to be Warsaw from 1944 either. It's more of a dreamy creation, a fantasy, phantom all coming from the director's mind bravely composed with uneasy feeling of disappointment, as if helmer writer wanted to express his doubt whether we would ever let it go and just live together not minding differences in this Babel world.

Whoever is seeking realism, regular narrative war movie and psychologically twisting drama would feel disappointment watching "Warsaw 44" since it's a rare, provocative, ambitious and original gem, a super budget experiment on one of the biggest and most horrifying events in XX century, a bloody opera staged before our damned eyes to show us the fire we lit up ourselves once in a while in the name of hatred and self-destruction.

As you probably know, I am from Poland and this is the film about one of the most important historical events of my country, the brutal reality of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. If you would like to learn some more facts about it, uncle google and aunt wiki are more than happy to help you out :) . Let's focus on the film! Mind that, I don't like Polish films... Even though I have watched some amazing ones [ Komornik (2005), Symetria (2003) ] I am really not fond of them.

2 minutes - of advertising the sponsors... I am already annoyed

9 minutes - something fishy is going on here... The acting feels good, music is nice and I am genuinely interested from the very first few minutes

23 minutes - LOL! Fallout music!!! ( I Don't Want To Set The World On Fire - The Ink Spots ), incredible!

27 minutes - damn... so much feels and drama, and it is only the beginning

31 minutes - if this is how it really looked like, I mean the organization, I feel bad for those damn fools...

32 minutes - bad CGI effects... but I forgive them, it's Poland, we have to cut some corners. They have just started the uprising, some random guy wants to join them and the commander says that the uprising is almost over... WTF?!

35 minutes - so far, it looks like some random people were bored and wanted some action... if this is what really happened (which I doubt), those poor bastards deserved to die for being plain stupid...

40 minutes - WTF!?!?!?!? Did the director just put some random kiss scene in a middle of a gunfight with some cartoon effects going on!? I am speechless...

48 minutes - holy S... I am glad that the director is not saving actors from dying, kudos for that

56 minutes - blood rain and body parts dropping from the sky after some big ass explosion, this film has it! (it can't be real, can it? It looked cool as hell though). After few minutes of research I have found that it was booby-trapped tank. You can read more about it here: http://www.warsawuprising.com/paper/dpa_sibierski.htm

1h 28minutes - so far so good, but from time to time the director has implemented some weird s..t. I have no idea why did he do that... it feels retarded and out of place... WTF... I can't believe he actually used some dub step music... It stinks with amateurism

1h 39minutes - the acting is really damn good, that's for sure!

1h 41minutes - bloody action is good too

Definitely a solid film, if you like military films, there is no option you will not like this one! I would definitely see another ww2 film from Jan Komasa.

tgchan's rating: 7.5 /10

Gives a historical backdrop to the Warsaw uprising against the German occupation. But what it does well is to show the horrors of war. Another antiwar movie. But with a polish background. I think the music segments are superfluous.

My both parents took an active part in Warsaw Uprising, and growing up in Warsaw I absorbed a whole lot of facts and points of view from the rest of my family, neighbors, books,newspapers, TV, and other movies about the Uprising. For the obvious reason this movie is very personal to me, and for the most part took me really close to the image of the events I've had since my childhood. The love triangle is not too important to me, as it could be replaced with another situation, typical for young people of this age. The battle scenes are extremely gruesome, but seem to be closer to reality than many war movies will show you. My uncle was cut in half by the bomb blast and the family could only bury the body from the waist down. My father was moving through the sewage system, full of stench from dead bodies and rats feasting on the corpses. Once he emerged he was not able to talk at all for several months. My parents were as young and full of life as the characters in the movie, and although love was definitely not a priority back then, the youth and all the things associated was a dominant factor. So this is how this movie talks to me - the youth is such an incredible force, it allows a man to go through Dante's hell.

Yes, seems like new CGI is allowing many non Hollywood productions to flood the market with bloody war tales with unprecedent realism. Add to this some historic facts, a love triangle and that is. You can forget the story as soon as you get up from the armchair. The only curiosity here are those slow motion pop music scenes seem taylored to please younger audiences that completely make everyone else to lose focus. The script is virtually introducing every possible resource to impress the viewer, to a point seems about to repar itself. Why is The Pianist so superior to his one? Being equally brutal, maybe the difference is the pace, where you can actually reflect on the events around you. Anyway, an interesting worthy movie. Just don't watch it during dinner!

do you know this feeling when a film is touching you inside, changes something in you, makes you wanna scream ? i guess this one is one of them

i will not tell u much about this film, i never liked to analyze what author wanted to say, what is the message, i wont tell you about the special effect (i guess the best one ever made in any polish production), settings with great detail, great city fight sequences, surprisingly original camera work, no, no I leave all that for experts who know what they say

let me better tell you something that this film changed in me

i read a lot about Warsaw Uprisings (both the Jewish one in Ghetto and Uprising 44 - please Don't MIX THOSE TWO), I watched documentaries, movies, i met some fighters when i was in primary school for some educational talks,

i think i knew ... but i had no idea until i watched this

is this a historic movie ? No really is this a war movie ? I wouldn't say so Love story ? That would be too simple

what is it then you ask ? I guess i will need more time and thoughts to figure it out, what i can tell u now is that it showed me people young people like me, who were faced with unthinkable times, unthinkable evil, and how it transformed them

it is one of those time when a history book fact, some figure, some picture, drags you into it, and leaves your mind damaged, just like it left those people, their city, their dreams

scary

First a quick in-deep synopsis. This movie is about probably the blackest hour of the history of Poland: it shows the Warsaw Uprising in the summer of 1944. The underground resistance movement after 5 years of Nazi occupation brought an open fight to the streets of capital. They planned for a 2-3 days struggle, but the battle went for 2 months; while the Russians forces driving the Germans back to the III Reich territory stopped at the Vistula river on the other side of the city (not crossing it for another 4 months). But this is not a biographical movie or chronicle account of historic events. The Uprising is (not so merely) a setting for a love triangle between a boy and 2 girls. And that is historically correct: many teens and children took active part in that WW2 battle

A love story in a war environment can very easily turn into a blockbuster soap opera. A movie about the national tragedy can easily turn into an obituary overloaded with shallow patriotic clichés. A well financed war picture can be an empty festival of special effects and explosion. But the "Warsaw '44" (in Poland entitled "City 44") does not. The director / screenwriter Jan Komasa swiftly avoided all of those traps. The viewers may also think that this movie will be boring, because of the slow pasted beginning of the story. But after seeing on the screen the first dropped body and some time later the first fantasy-like kiss scene, this is all but gone: we are fully pulled into this epic war and love story. Also stereotypical mines like "all Polish people are good / heroic and all Germans are evil / cowards" are nicely diffused through the entire picture. Of course the viewers are shown scenes like an execution of civilians by Germans soldiers and accounted for polish medical personnel taking care of wounded Germans; but we also get to see a polish officer pulling his rank to have a free sex with a polish girl, as well we see a German soldier vouching for some Poles in front of a Wehrmacht sweep commando. Viewers are also left with questions like: did the main charter kill a defenseless German soldier or was a mercy shown to him?

The technical level of this picture is at the top. If you like big budget Hollywood films, then this one is for you. Albeit it was made in Europe, there is very little in terms of special effects that could be done better in it. And this movie is like "The Matrix" (1999): in that (aside from the use of bullet time) it probably does not come up with anything new (with the exception the aforementioned kiss scene). But it does combine all of the well know elements (from both action / war genre and the chick flick features) and creates out of them a whole new quality, with attractive visuals and sound effects. For example the putting of a camera on a barrel of a hand held gun you could already see in the "9th Company" (2005); but here it still feels quite fresh and puts you in a middle of that action like when playing a computer game (an attempt that landed quite flat in he same year in the "Doom" movie, based on a eponymous first person shooter). And the confrontation between the two girls is made in such crafted and unexpected fashion, with bitter words painting how a post war existence will most likely look like for one of them, that it is just heartbreaking. And there are many memorable scenes of battle, joy, death and sex; with the most disturbing being the one showing a panic attack in the city's sewer system

As for the music- it plays a vital role. But do not expect a typical symphonic background, an all to epic choruses or some cheap jump scares; because the score is often quite simplistic. The composer Antoni Lazarkiewicz created both pure piano and neo-classical tracks but also a modern fusion of strings, guitars and electronic sounds, matching the screen events. And on top of that they have put various songs into this picture; including among others: a track by The Ink Spots from 1940's, a track from 70's by Czeslaw Niemen and to a much more surprise a piece of dub step. Without giving away the details, that dub step fits perfectly in those visually and emotionally crafted two scenes (kind of like the "All Along The Watchtower" reworked by Bear McCrery, written in 1967 by Bob Dylan, fitted nicely into a season finally of "Battlestar Galactica" s-f series in 2007). So not only is the original score great but also the music supervision deserves a kudos

And for those who say that the presented story is chaotic: you are half right. War (and love) can be a chaotic thing, so the movie simply reflects that. But also how and what we see simply comes out from the given style: the camera always follows one of the three main characters; and as such you do not get to see for example the landing of (very limited number of) regular polish army troops (equipped by the Russians), sent to boost the morale of the ongoing guerrilla fight in the surrounded city. Those troops just kinda show up on the streets one day- as they would for you, if you were a simple resistance movement combatant just doing your thing. But this and others actual events (like a scarce parachute drops made by western Allies, explaining to some point how could possibly the fighters survive for 2 months on scarce supplies) could be more and / or clearer incorporated into the story. It would give some more info to the less historically educated viewers and make "Warsaw '44" also a little longer than just over two hours. And because of that the rating of this great movie is only 10/10, and not 11/10

A Polish group tried to combat in the uprising in Warsaw during the Second World War.

I saw horror and an apocalyptic showdown like in the actual Ucraine war against the Russian.

The actors made a great job accompanied by top executed war sceneries. Well directed and sentimentally heartbreaking story. I suffered. 7/10.

There are much better films about world war two events. This movie combines some historical information with an improbable love triangle and battle scenes with matrix-like visual effects. The sound is fine, camera work is good and the visual effects are competent, but taste is lacking in the way it was all put together.

The scene where the protagonist first meets his main girl is very weak. The scene of their first kiss is ridiculous. For some unexplained reason, the main girl goes off on a walk, in the middle of a battle zone. The protagonist sees that there are Germans nearby and instead of shooting at the Germans from his vantage point or telling his mates that there is a problem, he goes after the girl, saves her from a bullet and when they kiss, rockets and anti-aircraft bullets suddenly fly around like it was Vietnam.

It's probably good enough for mass markets accustomed to Hollywood blockbusters, but it's not a good film.

I'm not Polish but my grandfather was a b-17 co-pilot and part of "Operation Frantic" (look it up on Wikipedia) so I have been interested in the Warsaw uprising and in particular the Soviet abetting of the Nazis by intentionally halting to let let the Warsaw resistors be slaughtered, blocking US attempts to aid them, and blocking other Polish resistance from helping as well. Really the way WWII is taught in the US, the absolute continual duplicity of the Soviet Union is utterly ignored, as is the fact that the Soviets were allied with the Nazis at the start of the war, enabling the war to start, for the very purpose of dismembering Poland completely, with Katyn Forest being just one example. And then at the end of the war, as Soviet troops advanced in Eastern Europe they made certain o do everything they could to insure as many Polish anti-Nazi fighters that might not be soviet controlled were killed.

On the film itself, Warsaw '44 is highly immersive and well done from a technical point of view showing the kinetic and hyperviolent nature of 20th century urban warfare. As far as the human interest aspect, yes it is a bit overly melodramatic but not overwhelmingly so.

Lastly the top review at the moment says this is an anti-war film. It thankfully is not. Yes a lot of warfare is oppressive, but a lot is a bout liberation. Without the US civil war we would have had slavery a lot longer. Without the US joining WWII to help liberate Europe, the the choices would have been the twin evils of Nazism and communism. Without the US going to war against Japan, both Korea and China, would have been slave states of the Japanese empire. Without the Korean war, S. Korea would have looked like N. Korea the past 65 years. In fact if not for the ancient Greeks going to war against the Persian hordes we have to wonder if a big part of Europe would look like the backward mess that is Iran has been and is.

Before reviewing the contents of the movie, I think it is important to explain that there are actually two historically important "uprisings" that took place in Warsaw:

(1) The first one is the 1943 "Warsaw Ghetto Uprising", whereby the jewish population in the large Warsaw Ghetto defended itself against the german SS.

(2) The second uprising took place in 1944. In this uprising, it was the population of Warsaw that took up arms against the german occupier and force it out of the city.

If you are interested in learning more about the first uprising, I can recommend movies like "Run Boy Run", "Jakob the Liar", "The Pianist" or "Uprising". This shows that there are already quite a number of movies about the 1943 ghetto uprising. But not so of the 1944 uprising... And that exactly is what this movie is about.

The first hour of the movie - i.e. The "first part" - easily deserves a score of 8.0/10. After that - i.e. The "second part" of the movie - the storyline unfortunately goes completely off-topic, whereby even the cinematography tanks. It is almost as if another director took over during this "second part". The video image is often shaky up to the point that it may cause a person to become seasick. Further, ridiculous camera positions are used like e.g. On a machine gun.

In this "second part", it also sometimes turns into some kind of 'gorefest', whereby it seems the objective to shock the viewer by showing as much blood as possible. I think this is totally unnecessary and also makes this movie unsuitable for the younger viewer.

I think that the "second part" of the movie deserves only a score of 5.5/10. Combining this with the score of 8.0/10 for the "first part", makes it an average score of 6.7/10.

In conclusion, I recommend this movie only for the first hour...

I have been reading up on movies on IMDb for many, many years now, but this is the first review that I have ever written. That is because I have not seen a movie depicting history and what actually happened in 1944 during WWII so accurately and movingly, and with great special effects, ever before (and I have seen quite a few).

It is a touching story, sticks to reality and I think that is what makes the biggest impression on the viewer - THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED to the Polish people, in real life. An absolute must-see of the year and in terms of war movies one of the most significant productions ever made.

The now old people who have survived the Warsaw Uprising, say they have never seen a movie as accurate as MIASTO 44 (= "City 44") - watch their moving opinions on YouTube, if you like.

For example, it shows German soldiers and what they were like, as well as the few men who were sent by the Russians in order to 'help' (yea, not really), but in the end created more havoc than anything, since they were simple men never trained for that big a war inside a city (Warsaw was the most destroyed city in WWII, Manila was 2nd).

I hope this review will be helpful to other people - in my opinion this movie is an absolute must-watch, it should be watched by the whole world so that everyone would finally be informed about WHAT those heroic people went through and had to endure. Polish people have a great spirit and always fight for what's right with great ambition, humor and intelligence. They assume other nations are loyal just like they are themselves, which doesn't and obviously DIDN'T always turn out for the best....

GO SEE THIS AMAZING MOVIE and you won't regret it - even if you don't like war movies, it should satisfy you on many other (deeper) levels :))

11 points out of 10 for the producers! wOw and thanks again for making this movie :)

This is a VERY well made film, and refreshingly so from a production that is not American. The visual effects are amazing and in my opinion do NOT take away from the emotions of the actual story.

I doubt the tragic history of Warsaw has ever been this brutally and realistically portrayed. One of the best WWII movies out there. It has found the balance between using cool and bloody visuals and slow-mo effects without making it so over the top that it becomes a pure action movie.

What makes me give 9 instead of 10 stars is the storyline, which even though great and not too cliché does lack something. I can't really pinpoint what it is.

But overall, this is a brilliant historical drama!

Not only is this the most unrealistic portrayal of of WWII (of any war, for that matter), it's also a bad movie. This makes Hollywood's "Pearl Harbor" look like an earnest, accurate portrayal of historical events (it was not). I won't waste my time listing the historical inaccuracies as they are too numerous to cite here. The characters and dialog are also abominable.

Save the 2:10 of your life that this film will waste and watch something else.

This is the movie that can shatter your mind. It squeezes your throat and doesn't let go till the end. You get it under your skin and when you realize that's it's based on facts you're no longer the same. Although it's shot in a very bright and colorful manner, without visual effects achieved by obscure camera work, it's very dark at the same time. This is the story of a very young man Stefan who is responsible for his family after his father's death on the front of the Second World War. He's not interested in any conspiracy, but when he meets a girl whose name is Ala, by whom he's fascinated and then in love, decides to set himself free from his mother's arms and, against his will, he's involved in the Warsaw Uprising. At the beginning there is fun in the war, typical for immature men, and even in the presence of the first death Stefan shows off his bravery in front of the girl. Everything changes suddenly with the first bullet and with some very tragic moment which he has witnessed. Those two things turn him into a walking dead who loses everything and all he wants is vengeance. The director Jan Komasa pulls the spectator into his movie and with no mercy forces him to experience the real cruelty of war. I have never seen in the cinema such brutality in its pure form, exposed in so natural way and not hidden behind convention. The first scene of Saving Private Ryan comes to my mind when I try to compare the presentation of death during battle, and death at all, in this movie. However here we have one big advantage, Mr. Komasa absolutely deprived his movie of any pathos. This film is simply about death and war burning out feelings, dreams and humanity. It's very realistic, but very fresh in its form with great soundtrack and editing, with some symbolic scenes that may be controversial, mostly in Poland, because Warsaw Uprising is the national tragedy here. It's made on a grand scale without compromise, shot in wide perspectives with great designer production. Undoubtedly this is just a great movie. Maybe I'm a little biased, because I regard previous Komasa's film Suicide Room as the best psychological drama I've ever seen, but I'm just a spectator and this is what I want to experience while watching movies – real emotions.

I am both Russian and Polish and am deeply interested in Warsaw Uprising films. Such as The Uprising was a great, huge film. This one gave some promise, too - made by Poles for Poles and in Polish. I was expecting best but I got almost worst. What went wrong? Well, several things. First, and this kills the whole production, all these totally unnecessary Doom or superhero style scenes depicting kissing, bullets flying all strange trajectories, hugely false, wrong and laughable love scene, and on top of that, this Dooom shooting scene that killed the whole message. Second, obvious nods to Private Ryan and all new US war epics with all that shaky camera, blood, loud dusty explosions, zipping bullets and deafening noise. What worked in USA did not work here. Third, really weak and generic performances of several young actors, leaving almost no hope for improvement and change. Fourth, poorly depicted events and hurried delivery, which seems to be a very amateurish attempt of re-creating The Pianist or Schindler's magic but fails flat here. In general, weak and floppy.

If I can summary this movie I would have to do that in two category:

Historical accuracy - 10/10 Story and emotional roller-coaster - 9/10

This film is a short introduction to the real history of Poland. It speaks through the the young people whose real live in Warsaw between the end of July 1944 and the beginning of October 1944 looked exactly how it was shown in the movie. Absolutely amazing accuracy of the depicting of some events and episodes of the Warsaw Uprising 1944. If you think it's exaggeration, IT'S NOT (even the scene with blood and humans' remains falling out of the sky is authentic)!!

I know the famous scene with the kiss looks strange from first view, but this is 'ars poetica', it was (and it's) to show what's going on in the hearts of those young and inexperienced people.

What film is not - it's not documentary movie and above all, it's not another fake-story Hollywood-like movie (see e.g. absurd and actually stupid series of war movies with Brad Pitt).

I could not sleep after watching of this film and there were many like me. I don't think there is a normal person who would see this movie (knowing that the story inside is the real depict of real events) without any emotional reactions. I really recommend it.

YOU MUST SEE IT !!!

WARSAW 44 makes no apologies, asks for no forgiveness, it's a no holds barred assault on the senses. Komasa doesn't care if he offends, if he steps all over stereotypes and clichés, this is film making at it purest. It's great to see a film maker whose work clearly isn't interfeared with by the powers that be.

I went along to the movies not really wanting to see this movie, thinking it was a 'girly' movie, one which had more technical skill rather than a storyline. I was surprised more than anything I could imagine.

I have seen a lot of movies in my time, but this movie just took me by storm. Its uniqueness, ironically enough because it was based on a real life situation was a refreshing change from the usual Hollywood blockbuster. This movie provided a brilliant (pardon the pun) insight into how people especially those young ones cope with a tragic trauma that is war in this case.

Either way it's a roller coaster and one not to be missed! A war film hasn't been done like this before. Maybe it could refer at times to Inglorious Basterds but WARSAW 44 is much more darker and meaningful in tone. Certainly if you're not a fan of Tarantino's style, this may be bit harder to understand, but never-the-less, it is a film which simply has to be seen. No self respecting film fan should miss this. And the performance of young actors... Oscar don't you dare ignore him!!