GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Manthast Absolutely amazing

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

SnoopyStyle It's 1944 in the last days of the Warsaw uprising. Lieutenant Zadra commands a company of desperate freedom fighters. They have inferior weapons facing overwhelming German forces. They are soon surrounded by the Germans and ordered to retreat into the sewers. They find themselves cut off and stuck in the dark tunnels.The above ground fighting has certain moments. I didn't know that the Germans were using armored remote control vehicles. There are some action and one tank. It has lots of devastated landscape. There are a few too many main characters. Once the movie goes underground, it goes in a small maze. It's confining but not that intense.

Michael Terceiro This is an excellent movie. It tells the story of the last stages of the Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis. A small unit of Polish Resistance fighters are ordered to fall back to a central position by going through the sewers. Most of the actions happens in the eerie confines of the sewers, which creates a very gripping atmosphere. However, the most interesting aspect of the movie is the character development. All of the characters are so different and changeable. No stereotypical characters in this movie!Andrzej Wajda is a truly great director. He is able to make unique movies based on the character development, rather than relying on gimmicks to gain the audience's attention. In this movie you never know what is ultimately going to happen to the resistance fighters until the final scenes.

bbrooks94 Ashes and Diamonds may be better known, but of Wajda's 'War Trilogy', this is my personal favourite. With 'A Generation', we saw the shattered dreams and hopes of a future uprising before the war had begun and in 'Ashes and Diamonds' the anxious delirium and paranoia of post-war Poland. However, Kanal presents Poland during wartime. A disturbing, claustrophobic vision of madness told through the eyes of various Home Army resistance fighters in the dark sewers of Warsaw. I can't think of a more horrifying, intense or gloomy vision of war. Genuinely haunting, made more so by the eerie classical soundtrack and superb performances, especially from Vladek Sheybal as Michael, the artist who eventually succumbs to insanity and mournfully wanders the disgusting tunnels, playing a haunting melody on an ocarina as he does so. Yet, while incessantly miserable and pessimistic, it's a very beautiful, poetic and engaging film, directed and shot with such delicacy and precision.

Ilpo Hirvonen Kanal was the second feature by Andrzej Wajda, who is remembered as the master of Polish new wave, and the second film in his 'war trilogy'; in between of Generation and Ashes and Diamonds. Kanal tells the story of the desperate Polish uprising against the Germans in 1944 and the tragical failure of it. Not only film scholars but the people in 1957 saw Kanal as a political statement. They saw it as a description of the bitterness Polish people had for the Soviet troops who didn't help them early enough to beat the Germans. But Andrzej Wajda has said that he didn't want to get mixed up with political nor social backgrounds. He wasn't interested in making a film with a direct message or to point the finger at the ones responsible for the tragedy of the uprising. He only wanted to tell the story of a resistance group whose withdrawal grew out to be a modern parallel for Dante's hell.The screenwriter of Kanal, Jerzy Stefan Stawinski, took part in the events of 1944 and, through that, brought a realistic touch to the film which probably meant a virility test of some kind for him. His approach to the subject was mature and brilliantly balanced. His sympathy was clearly for the soldiers but he offered a contrast - another side; there is clearly strong skepticism for the desire and price of the soldiers' heroism.The film is divided into two separate acts and the division is precisely considered. In the very beginning this division is made clear to us; the realistic prologue of the battle on the ground is instantly followed by a long surreal sequence in the sewers. It is a metaphorical poem; a combination of realism and fantasy. The realism of the filthy sewers and the faces of the soldiers soon turn into surrealism of obscure sounds, suggestive music and figures walking in the mist."These are the tragic heroes: watch them closely in the remaining hours of their lives." A company is desperately fighting against the Germans but soon gets an order to retreat to the center through sewers. The moment when the soldiers move down, from the hell above to the hell beneath, is very important; the soldiers go through their final battle of life and death, love and heroism. In this particular scene people are shoving each other and rushing down to the sewers - the road for the damned, the river of death.