Fresh and Exciting

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

As brutal and grim as this movie was, I was never convinced of its realism. In addition, I questioned the goal of the movie.If you read books like Bettelheim's 'Informed Heart' (a psychological analysis of surviving in the camp from a survivor), they will forever change what you think you know about concentration camps. The psychological torture there was so systematic and extreme, that not only were people's layers of social behaviour and their moral compasses completely torn apart and not allowed a millimeter of breathing space, even their basic instincts were altered.Which is why, when I watch someone like Steve Buscemi pretend to be a concentration camp inmate by swearing and throwing his attitude around as if he were an inmate of Alcatraz, I find it impossible to take the movie seriously.And then there is the question of making the Sonderkommandos the protagonists of a movie. It is hard not to judge them, but if you take the above into account, it is also hard to judge them. So, putting aside the question of judgment, here we have people forced to do horrible things to their own people, human beings in a shameful state worse than death, hating themselves for it with every breath, yet unable to keep themselves from surviving.To display real people in this extreme state of shame and remind everyone of what they had to go through, is like all those pictures showing naked Jews in concentration camps. You had better have a very good reason to publicly display their past embarrassments. Does this movie have such a reason? Just because one group decided to fight back, does that make them heroes and make this story worth retelling? I much preferred the man about to be gassed who fought against the Sonderkommando and decided to be gassed with his integrity intact.It is an insulting thing when movie producers and directors look for Jewish heroes by searching for the ones that picked up a gun, brushing aside the rest of the Jews as sheep. Sure, fighting back is important and even heroic. But it doesn't justify anything and everything. What about heroics of the soul? So, as grim and soul-searching as this movie wants to be, and despite the power in some of the scenes, I question the subject matter.

OK I am 40minutes through this movie, then suddenly I switched off.The story telling has badly executed very poorly, you don't get what's up. Out of context dialogues of random people. Maybe it will make sense later in the film, but how should I care if I already rage within the first 40% of the movie.The visuals are very bad, too dark, shadows all over the place. Of course this has been done on purpose, but it totally fails. I constantly blinked because of the eye strain due to my efforts of recognizing something. Also, why does the camera shake, is this blair witch?Not worth watching except you are one of those people which already admire a movie just because it picks up cruel facts of history.

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.

The Grey Zone is so full of horror and anguish that it's a hard movie to watch in some ways.The basic premise is 'how far would we go to save ourselves' in situations such as those faced by the Jews in Nazi concentrations camps. The answer is, of course, almost as far as necessary. This film concerns the crews of Jews who were forced to lead their countrymen into the gas chambers at Auzcwitz and then dispose of the bodies in cematoria afterward.With the only option death, what would you do? It's a tough question to answer but this film gets it about right. By the halfway mark you are so immune to seeing piles of dead men, women and children around that I think you actually can start to feel just a tiny bit of how desensitized these men must have become as they tried to buy themselves just a few more months of live.Most of the performances are very good though I disagree with some that Harvey Keitel's was up to his usual brilliance. The German accent didn't seem quite right to me but there you go.Great film, great message.