Tockinit not horrible nor great

Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

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

Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

851222 Greetings from Lithuania."The Grey Zone" (2011) is a disturbing, a must watch movie to learn and remember. The things that are portrayed in this picture are not the once who anyone would lime to remember, but hey happened, and they must be witnessed to understand that true nature of humankind is sometimes unforgiven. This is very well made movie, not gore in images, but brutal in showing reality, that you can't just simply turn away from. This is not "Schindler's List", and yet it contains stuff, that you won't even read in books, or see in movies. Overall, 8/10 for a portrayal of human low key, it's unforgettable when you will see it, not for sensitive soul viewer.

Hitchcoc If his is indeed an accurate portrayal of a group of Jews who survived a few extra weeks by doing the bidding of the Nazi pigs who run the extermination camps, God help us! This is one of the bleakest things I have ever seen. We, of course, have to ask the simple question, "What is life worth?" If the answer is everything, then we can understand why these poor souls did what they did. In every portrayal of these camps, we see how powerless the inmates are. They are face daily with pistols and machine guns. They are arbitrarily shot in the head for crying, or just standing in the wrong place. They are the victims. What about the Germans? How can a human being do this to another and take pleasure in it? I know how naive that question is, but it is certainly at the central core of everything. The closing scene is so hopeless and so gripping. There are almost surrealistic moments, almost like those in silent films where a face is made to stand for a thousand words. I doubt I could watch this again. I also don't know that there is another holocaust film that can affect one any more than this.

Neil Doyle Despite all the realism depicted in THE GREY ZONE amid the actual day to day operations of a Nazi prison camp, there's a certain stage quality in the dialog that serves as a reminder that you're watching the screen version of a stage play and not what should seem more like a true life documentary. That's the fault of the script taken from David Mamet's play and other eye-witness sources--but the acting is excellent.And yet, it does manage to convey just how those prison camps used other prisoners to operate the gas chambers, to carry out the deed with false promises--"Just be sure to remember where you hook the clothes so you can pick up your belongings when you leave"--and the backbreaking jobs of loading trucks with dead bodies and depositing them on chutes that go directly into a blazing furnace. Amid all this, various stories are entwined involving the petty quarrels among the men assigned to these tasks so they could prolong their own lives for at least four months of assured survival.The story involving a girl who does not die during the twenty-minute gassing and is then revived and how the men argue over how to protect her from further harm, is intense and touching in that it shows the humanity that is still in their souls. Her story and how it ends is one of the film's most memorable and touching elements.This is more of an in depth look at "the final solution" than any other recent films dealing with the extermination of Jews has ever been, with the exception of SCHINDLER'S LIST and THE PIANIST in which the accent was more on the triumph of the human spirit and a much broader view of the war itself in epic mode.This is a darker, intimate look at the actual operation of the camps as experienced by a handful of prisoners--the brutality, the torture, and raises the question: how far would you go to survive? It also shows how not all the Jews were as passive about their fate as some have claimed, often opposing the Nazi officers and paying for it with their lives.In the hands of a greater director, it might have been an even more impressive film than it is, so that I'm unable to place it in the same class with the two films mentioned above. The cast is uniformly good, but HARVEY KEITEL is outstanding as an SS Commander keeping strict tabs on the camp's hard-working doctor.In its own way, it's just as important. Young students of history would be well advised to view this one for a better understanding of how "the final solution" was supposed to occur and the methods used to carry out an enormous project known as "the holocaust".

darienwerfhorst When I visited Auschwitz in 1990, I remember that my companion and I sat down outside the gates, once we were done, and cried for about an hour before catching the train back to Krakow.When I saw the first few minutes of this film, and those horrible buildings and the piles of ash that were still there when I visited, it brought everything back, but told a story I didn't know much about.It makes sense that the Nazi's would have used Jews to dispose of other Jews...they were totally expendable, and it's very logical, and perhaps that is why it is so horrible.The dialog is a bit Mamet like, yes, and you definitely know that you are watching something that was once a play, based on the somewhat mannered dialog and direction. And yet, it's a great story, well acted.Who is culpable? What would you do to survive? If you knew you were probably going to die, wouldn't you want to enjoy your last few weeks eating and drinking well? It's one of the very few films on the Holocaust I've seen that doesn't draw everything in black and white....what some of these men do to their fellow Jews is despicable, yet who amongst us can say that if he were hungry and desperate, he might not do the same.Definite food for thought.....and warning.. I wouldn't eat during this movie. You may experience some queasiness.