TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Desertman84 The Poet is a drama film starring Colm Feore, Roy Scheider, Kim Coates and Daryl Hannah. It was written by Jack Crystal and directed by Damian Lee. It was released in the United States as Hearts of War.At the dawn of World War II, a rabbi's daughter and a disenchanted German soldier fall in love and are separated by the war. They struggle on a perilous journey to find one another.A young German officer and the daughter of a Rabbi find their blooming relationship threatened by the onset of World War II in director Damian Lee's emotional war romance. The setting is German occupied Poland, and Europe is finally feeling the full devastation of Hitler's might. German Officer Oskar and his Jewish girlfriend Rachel are deeply in love, but tragically torn apart by the violent village massacres that spread like a plague across the land. Convinced that she will never be reunited with her true love, expectant mother Rachel reluctantly marries respectable Jewish man Bernard, who longs to earn her love by raising her child as his own. Later, when Rachel and Oskar unexpectedly cross paths amidst the violence of the Russian front line, a sudden tragedy prompts one man to make the ultimate sacrifice.This account of the World War II star-crossed love between a rabbi's daughter and a war-hating officer wants very much to be taken seriously. Unfortunately,this proves impossible, since the script, casting and wartime atmosphere play as pure make-believe.Also,the audience is herded from cliché to unintentional farce to insult-to-its-intelligence movie that should have been thought carefully before made.

JPD 49 I thought I'd seen WWII done in just about every possible way, but this is the first time I've seen a movie involving German soldiers traipsing through the Polish/Russian countryside gathering information on partisan cells. If only it were done better, and without the ridiculous plot, I'd have been very interested, but it went wrong almost from the start. Terrible screenplay, horrible weird accents, silly love triangle plot etc & etc. While watching it I didn't realize the small part of the rabbi was played by Roy Scheider, who I thought had died before this movie was made, and it amazed me that the actor was so much like that great actor, and at how well the part was being played in such an otherwise poorly acted movie. I caught Scheider's name on the closing credits. A pity such a fine performance was wasted in such a poor movie. Saw this under the DVD title 'Hearts of War.' Thankfully I bought it for a dollar.

danuneek After reading some of the bad feedback from other reviews, I decided to watch it anyway. Unfortunately, they were all spot on. Its rather a shame too, as the it 'looked' quite authentic with some decent effort made towards costume and setting. Even the cinematography was at a decent standard. However, everything else was pretty bad, terrible even. The main thing that let it down was the bad script which led to some appalling dialogue and acting at times. Some scenes are laughable its that bad. The funniest scene been at 43 minutes when a boom mic appears in shot for about 10 seconds. I've given it a 3 simply for the mise en scene.

leiser18 I found this movie on DVD at Blockbuster under the above title. I was very disappointed. It was unrealistic and the plot full of holes. The German accents were almost annoying and even hard to understand. The only redeeming quality of this movie was Roy Scheider as the rabbi. At least he seemed believable. Whoever came up with the script should have watched a good Holocaust movie like Schindler's List first before subjecting the public to this mediocre stuff. Darryl Hannah talents were wasted in this film, plus she didn't seem old enough to have a grown (twenty-something) son. Forget about watching The Poet, aka Hearts of War!!!