Limerculer
A waste of 90 minutes of my life
TaryBiggBall
It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.
Taraparain
Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.
Jacobe I. of Ginsbourne
People, sadly, this happened.When I saw this movie, I WOKE UP.NO ONE on earth can anymore be any kind of racist or even Nazi.I will personally see to that. The youth nowadays, and people everywhere, are again really often of right-wing "national" attitude. That is wrong.Humanity has to work together on the whole globe against the new fascism as described by Aaron Russo in his true docu "America: Freedom to Fascism", against what now happens since 1999 to half a million Falun Gong mass murdered and tortured and organ-bereft in Chinese concentration camps - and since 1999, now in 2010, no one did anything against the Chinese Falun Gong holocaust! Bush transformed USA into a fascist police state where everyone can be arrested for no reason, and in 1913, Congress was tricked and bribed into letting the Fed. Reserve Bank print US money, no more backed by gold. The "Internal Revenue Service" is an illegal, criminal organization, enforcing wanton, unjustified "taxes" which are unapportioned and contradict the US constitution.Many Americans are opposed against Obama for no reason. Obama only repaired the Bush-damaged economy. Obama is black, that is why.In Africa, Simbabwe, people are often too stupid to see that it's different in the case of Mugabe, not a socialist, but a mass-murderer.Nazis are simply evil. The world didn't learn anything since 1945, and will only learn until every human being has been extremely victimized, tortured, murdered. then people will slowly start to realize if they don't fight fascism, they will all die.It takes bravery to act against an evil overpower. Nevertheless. Dying for the cause against REAL evil of fascism is way better than just to live peacefully, ignoring the suffering of millions of others who are mass murdered and tortured. The problem: When people are not sensible to that matter, they often don't immediately identify with the victims, because those victims have been dis-righted, discriminated, have been declared "sub-humans", which are Nazi words. The only sub-humans are the Nazis, the biggest evil of all time.I myself found a book from 1937, printed in Germany. It shows only ODIN, the viking god, and Greek gods, it does't show any Christian or Jewish contents, but only refers to Africans as "primitve peoples".Also, I found a dictionary from Germany from 1892. It shows several negatively described words under the German word "Jude" for "jew": TO JEW (german: "Jüdeln") meaning to cheat in business, lots of other negative descriptions of Jewish matters. No wonder. If even a dictionary from the center of military Bismarck state Prussia speaks clear antisemitic racism, hatred against Jews, it had to come out that way. Too few people realize that, and that such a thing, such mass murder and torture, can always happen again and does in the sad case of not communist, but in fact fascist China.People! Realize! Go away from being racists or Nazis! Or I will personally fight all Nazis, and that is a major promise I will keep. cheerio!
Chrysanthepop
Tim Blake Nelson's brave 'The Grey Zone' tells the story of a group of Sonderkommandos, the Jewish workers who were selected to gather the Jewish 'prisoners'to the gas chambers and then dispose of their bodies by burning them. The film is brutal in its portrayal and hardly leaves anything to the imagination. It also raises the question of survival. 'The Grey Zone' shows what happened to those who have fought, those who have submitted and surrendered, those who have refused to give up and those who have accepted their fate. All of them ultimately experienced the same fate. This is no movie with an uplifting ending or a message of hope. It is unsympathetic to the viewer. As director and writer, Tim Blake Nelson does a fine job by telling the story and fleshing out the characters. The editing is well done. The execution is slightly on the poorer side. It gives the feel of a TV movie. In the acting department it is Harvey Keitel and Mira Sorvino who stand out. Keitel is well acquainted with negative roles and thus it is no surprise that he pulls off the part of the Nazi officer. Sorvino has a smaller part but she displays Dina's anguish, courage and despair with skill. David Arquette is better than his usual. 'The Grey Zone' is a worth seeing because it depicts another side of the Holocaust with a brutally honest treatment and it is thought provoking because while it is easier for some to judge as an outsider, it raises the question of what one, what you, would have done had you been in the same shoes, knowing that you were going to die no matter what.
mmmn_mdhansen
If it weren't such great story, i would give rate this movie as a 2. The cast has many great actors (Keitel, Buscemi), but they are overshadowed by the range of terrible popcorn comedy actors (Arquette, Sorvino). The casting overall was terrible. The acting, surprisingly even from the good actors, was mediocre at best. I blame this mostly on the directing as the lines ALL seem to be forced. It is no wonder that this movie went almost straight to DVD. Its just too bad that they had waste such a great story, and disgrace the people who committed such brave acts during one of the most barbaric acts in the history of the world. If you want to learn about a great rebellion that took place in Auschwitz and you don't want to read a book about it, then watch this movie. But just beware that the movie sucks.
JoeytheBrit
The Grey Zone explores well-covered territory from a unique angle: that of the Jewish prisoners who prolonged their lives by four months by becoming members of a unit used to herd their fellow prisoners into the gas chambers. Inevitably, such a subject matter raises the question of to what lengths the viewer would go in order to stay alive, and the cost to the people who found themselves capable of colluding with their captors. When one new arrival to Auschwitz, ferried straight from the train to the shower's changing room, loudly challenges Hoffman (David Arquette) over his and his friend's breezy instructions to remember the number of the hook on which they hang their clothes so that they can find them after the shower, Hoffman beats him to a bloody pulp – as if for forcing him to confront what he is doing to his people. Despite this, the performances are subdued for the most part, the prisoner's attitudes to their situation almost matter-of-fact. Given fine food and alcohol in payment for their work, they live in ivory towers that have been stained by human ashes.The survival of a young girl after showering in the Nazi's deadly gas just as the men are preparing to stage their revolt triggers an emotional crisis amongst the members of the unit, with some insisting she be killed for their protection and others demanding she be allowed to live. They face a dilemma that is mirrored by those of the German soldiers who mill around the girl uncertainly after the protesters have all been killed. There is a line beyond which even those who have grown almost inhumanly inured to killing will hesitate to step. The girl, alone and defenceless, unlike the masses herded into the showers, forces them to put a face to their victims and ejects them from their oddly cocooned existence.The film is an adaptation of a stage play, apparently, and this fact is evident in the dialogue, which sometimes seems unreal, as if the speakers are somehow detached from the emotions they are supposed to be feeling. This may be deliberate, another example of the tamping down of their true emotions, but its sometimes distracting. Despite this, the performances are good, especially that of Harvey Keitel who seems to grow into the part of the German officer who knows he has lost touch with everything that made him human.
