Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Brennan Camacho Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Blake Rivera If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Alex da Silva Vladimir (Gregory Peck) leads a group of guerrillas against the Nazi invaders in the forests of Russia. His small group is waiting for the order to attack. It finally comes with the message "The snow will fall".The film is well acted with tense moments, eg, when the German soldier makes his escape with only Nina (Tamara Toumanova) in the hideout to defend herself alone against him. The group dynamics are well portrayed within this troupe of rebels and there is a very human element to the story. There are poignant scenes including Nina's silence when Mitya (Glenn Vernon) is taken by the Germans and the film has a memorable ending. It's patriotic but it's still a good film.

Mark Sevier I saw this film when it was first released, many decades ago; so my memories are faded. But I do remember that the performances of Peck and Toumanova were electrifying.The quality of the production was, I thought, excellent. As I was a teen-ager, the intimate scenes between Peck and Toumanova had less to say to me than they might have done. Yet now, sixty-odd years later, I still remember them as emotionally meaningful.I remember thinking that wearing dark clothes while trying to manoeuvre in the snow was stupid, and not true-to-life. But the overall impression was of heroic resistance against overwhelming odds.It was inspiring and uplifting. I glowed for days.

Hoplophile-1 In and of itself, it's a good film. Not a great film, but a good film.However, the reference to a "free people" in the opening was as sickening today as it should have been in 1944. In fact the first SSRs invaded by the Germans (especially the Ukraine) welcomed the Germans as liberators.Being produced in 1944, it doesn't show the thousands, tens of thousands, of Soviet citizens murdered or exiled to Siberia by their fellow Soviet "liberators" because they stayed behind. Russian soldiers captured by the Germans who were fortunate enough to survive the war were sent to gulags because they surrendered or were captured. Nikita Kruschev earned the nickname "Butcher of the Ukraine" for the murder and/or deportation of millions of Ukrainians sick of both German and Soviet rule. After the "Great Patriotic War," not during.The film is pure propaganda despite the fact that Hollywood, and any American who cared to do the research, knew what the Soviets were doing to their own people.Ignore the political context (or lack thereof in the film) and it's an acceptable yarn, typical of its genre.

Melvin M. Carter The old sitcom Hogan's Heroes with its threat to the inept Col.Klink of being sent the Eastern Front got me interested in why that threat rather than say North Africa, Italy or Western Europe held such terror. The reason: It was hell on Earth! If the forces engaged by the Hitler regime had available for duty in the West there is a chance that WWII in Europe might have ended in late Aug. 1945 with a slim chance that no Allied forces would have had bridgeheads across the Rhine. Thankfully for world history The Wehrmact was ground up in the most vicious modern war campaign of the last century. Perhaps one of the reasons the world isn't( And may it never happen) a nuked out wasteland is the fact that the Soviets had fought a savage four year war on its own home soil and spent the better part of twenty years hiding the damage done to it. A scarred but comparatively healthy Soviet Union might have went to war during the Cuban Missle Crisis with catastrophic results for the world( Paris Hilton the glow in the dark two headed freak come to mind) Back on subject this film along with "Song Of Russia" was an ode to the Russians for now being on the "right" side. The film is dull with too many why we fight/and what we're ready to sacrifice speeches. Peck's partisan band is slowly knocked off until he Moscow Cutie and old peasant from Tevel's village are left waiting to be ground into the snowy steppes as a flaming Nazi tank( Did the screenwriter know something about the sexual habits of certain Nazi types " Himmler you look ravishing in that pink chiffon number") rolls over them. Well Stalin was a brutal dictator but he had hordes of increasingly effective officers and troops engaged with the German Army's best, while another brutal dictator Chiang Kai Shek, led a corrupt regime that strategically didn't do a damn thing to influence the Pacific War.Oh well. The Commie Slavs 1 The Corrupt Triad 0 the film is a two star time filler if say Paris Hilton ain't on