SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

SnoopyStyle Boris Grushenko (Woody Allen) is facing execution as he recounts his story. In Czarist Russia, Boris is in love with his intellectual cousin Sonja (Diane Keaton). She is jilted by Boris' handsome brother Ivan and marries a rich herring merchant instead. Despite being a coward, Boris is drafted to fight in the Napoleonic Wars. Sonja becomes a widow. Ivan is killed in the war but Boris becomes an accidental hero. The two reunite to marry and try to save the world by assassinating Napoleon.This is a parody of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy novels in a spoof. As such, this may not be to everyone's taste. One has to have a wide-ranging literary and art film knowledge to appreciate a lot of the jokes. Diane Keaton does get to do more in this one. She has some darker sides and is almost equal to Woody. The literary crowd may have some laughs although they may be too stuffy to relax about the skewering.

Kyle Perez "Love and Death (1975)" is arguably one of, if not, the funniest Woody Allen film to ever be created. Allen plays Boris, the politically ambivalent, pacifist and neurotic soldier whom, against his will, must fight for the Russian Army. He's in love with Sonja (Keaton), his "cousin twice removed", whose never expressed any kind of mutual feelings towards him. But with their intricate, existential conversations, you'd think they're a match made in intellectual heaven.This film offers us snippets of those who have inspired Allen's career. Ingmar Bergman the acclaimed Swedish director, has always been a huge influence of Allen's work, with both men showing this kind of fascination with death. The scenes with the Grim Reaper (dressed in white, not black) and Boris are a wonderful homage that calls to mind Bergman's "Det sjunde inseglet (1957)", though done in a satirical manner which is more Allen- esque. He also pays tribute to Charles Chaplin with the likes of a hilarious slapstick gag.Some of the humour is straightforward while other jokes require that extra knowledge of classic literature and/or European cinema. But the humor is relentless and done with such care - every scene with Allen and Keaton together is absolute gold. And with the occasional 4th wall breaks, in classic Woody style, we are given that perfect dose of introspection that will make you question much of life's ambiguity once all the laughs have faded away. A near-perfect film by Allen.

lasttimeisaw Into his eighties, Woody Allen is prolific as ever, his annual output has been tenaciously consistent, although these most recent ones seem to have lost his mojo after the unexpected resurgence of plaudits for MIDNIGHT IN Paris (2011) and a Cate Blanchett Oscar-bait showcase BLUE JASMINE (2013).So one might feel more inclined to visit Allen's time-honroured earlier works, LOVE AND DEATH, his sixth feature, a kooky war parody gets certain inspiration from classic Russian novel. During the Napoleonic Wars, Boris Grushenko (Allen), is the weakling of his Russian family, a bookish pacifist, the characteristic Allen-esque persona, pining for his twice-removed cousin Sonja (Keaton), but the latter doesn't reciprocate with the same feeling, apart from their unbidden philosophical babble. When Napoleon (Tolkan, impersonates the personage with po-faced drollness) invades Austria, Boris and his brothers are enlisted in the Russian Army and sent to the front. However incompetent Boris is as a front-line soldier, a ludicrous and scarcely credible plot-device makes him a war hero.Reunited with Sonja, who has just widowed after the departure of her herring merchant husband Voskovec (Frieder), Boris tactfully has his wicked way with a man-eater Countess Alexandrovna (Georges-Picot), and miraculously survives from a duel between him and the latter's enraged lover and marksman Anton (Gould), more significantly, he takes advantage of Sonja's sympathy (who can refuse a man's dying wish?) and they marry eventually although it is to Sonja's great chagrin, according to her ideal theory of love's three aspects: intellectual, spiritual and sensual, Boris has never even been on her to-do list.Time comes to the rescue, Sonja gradually softens her harsh view towards Boris, who instead, is plagued by the notion of suicide, since childhood, death has always fascinated and engrossed him, from his surreal dream of men coming out of coffins, to a chance meeting with the Grim Reaper himself as a child, until a tête-à-tête with a dead soldier in the battleground. Just when their relationship ameliorates and they decide to start a family, Napoleon invades the Russian Empire, Boris proposes to flee, but Sonja broaches a bold plan to assassinate Napoleon out of ire. Together, they impersonate as the visiting Spanish count and his sister, to meet Napoleon at his headquarter in Moscow, but the dispute between murder and moral conscience troubles Boris, when the crunch arrives, can he administer the coup de grâce? Or, is it a death knell for him to finally be take away by the Grim Reaper?Throwaway jest aplenty, gallows humour delights, even the smart-aleck himself candidly confesses "my disgustingness is my best feature", LOVE AND DEATH remarkably buries Allen's usual pedantic pretension one inch beneath the tongue-in-cheek farce, also a full-blown Diane Keaton begins to upstage Allen with her comedic bent and emotive voltage.Blatant homages to Ingmar Bergman's THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957) and PERSONA (1966) aside, the movie also pays tributes to various comedians with slapstick humour and self-conscious doublespeak, adopting a fine selection of passages from modern-classic Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev, LOVE AND DEATH wallows in Woody Allen's idealistic vim and vigour, not his best, but definitely belongs to the brighter side.

ShadeGrenade 'Love & Death' was Woody Allen's last film before his 'reinvention' as a more serious film-maker with 'Annie Hall' in 1977, and is an uproarious spoof of classic Russian literature such as 'War & Peace'. It opens with 'Boris' ( Allen ) in a cell awaiting execution. What circumstances brought him to this predicament? The film goes into flashback mode. Boris is in love with 'Sonja' ( Diane Keaton ), his beautiful cousin, but she prefers his brother 'Ivan', whom Boris claims cannot even write his own name in the ground with a stick. He is then caught up in the Napoleonic Wars ( "we kill Frenchmen, they kill Russians, before you know it, its Easter!" ), and against the odds, becomes a hero, seducing a beautiful countess ( Olga Georges-Picot ). He finally marries Sonja, but it is not a happy union, although she manages to make some wonderful dishes out of snow. Sonja then comes up with her grand master plan - the assassination of Napoleon Bonaparte...As with his other films of this period, most of the gags have a strong Marx Brothers flavour, along with anachronisms such as Boris and a gang of cheerleaders suddenly appearing on the battlefield, along with a hot-dog vendor. There is a duelling sequence which one can imagine might have worked for Harpo Marx. Keaton, as ever, is excellent. Her meaningless discussions with Boris over the futility of human existence are priceless. Boris is agnostic; "If only I could see a miracle...if only God would just cough!". My favourite moment is Boris quoting from the Bible: "Yay, I will walk through the valley in the shadow of death...come to think, I will RUN through through the valley in the shadow of death...you get out the valley quicker that way!". 'Love & Death' ends with the sight of Boris and the Grim Reaper dancing through trees. It is easy to see the scene now as symbolically bringing to a close this era of Woody Allen movies. He was smart to make the change when he did as the television show 'Saturday Night Live' was about to unleash a new wave of comedians - such as Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, John Belushi, and Dan Ackroyd - who went on to define 80's American film comedy.