Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

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

denis888 This is a 2013 German TV series, originally titled Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter - Our Mothers, Our Fathers - 3 episodes 90 minutes each. When it was out, this series produced not a small stir and a real havoc among Polish, German and English-speaking audiences. Why? At first, it seems just a story of 5 friends during the times of WWII. Yeah, but with one slightly huge difference - this is a story form the Germans' point of view. And this is where the biggest controversy is about. I cannot dwell deeper into the movie plot, otherwise, that'll be a spoiler, I can just say that several aspects of the story do stir serious bedazzlement and shock. And there is one more serious drawback - despite all the desperate efforts, the movie does lack certain depth of character development and does leave with a sense of some over the surface gliding. The actors try very much, and often they deliver decent ideas, but sometimes the film just leaves much to be desired. This is such a painful and delicate ground - Jews, Holocaust, Nazi rise, Communism versus Nazism - that any slight bias will ruin the whole movie easily. This one barely stood the ground and still flopped on may aspects

zed-34276 This series is excellent if one views it as the witness of a minority of skeptical, unconvinced Germans who did not buy into the "rassenkrieg." Since innumerable eulogies in film of Danish, Dutch and French resistance movements rely on the same understanding it is hard to understand why this would not be acceptable from a German perspective. The emphasis on the total loss and unraveling of human existence in this series, compared to the usual nationalistic nonsense produced on this subject makes this a very, very good series. Anyone looking for a comparison in quality needs look no further than the product of modern Russian film companies.

kgianforti First of all, people seem to get extremely upset because of historical inaccuracies. Remember people, this is about a WAR. There will never be a movie that perfectly reflects what happened in a war whether you were an American, German, civilian, etc. Even with veterans/survivors sitting and helping the writers WRITE the script, it will never truly reflect what happened because everyone involved all had their own experience and you can never bundle those experiences into one movie perfectly. No one can ever fully understand what those people went through and the ones who went through it can probably never fully describe their experiences/emotions/thoughts. I loved this movie. I loved that it was from the German perspective. I was on the edge of my seat practically the entire movie. I would highly recommend it to anyone. It is definitely for adult viewers.

Bene Cumb It is complicated for Germany, who was the main (but not at all single) inducer of World War II, to make something depicting that era as several like-minded and pressure groups from the "allied" side find immediately something worth criticism. On the other hand, German environment, characters and language provide so much additional value, that I prefer watching films and series on related issues this way - unless it is blunt defensive propaganda...But Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter is definitely not the latter; it is a sad and dramatic story about deprived illusions and opportunities, without clear assessments provided, thus letting the viewers ponder on and over painful and serious issues. The budget was apparently big, allowing to create realistic wartime/battle scenes and employ versatile actors from different generations (particularly Tom Schilling as Friedhelm Winter, Ludwig Trepte as Viktor Goldstein, Sylvester Groth as Sturmbannführer/Standartenführer Hiemer). True, not all scenes are of the same value and necessity, and the final scene seemed a bit odd, constructed, but the overall plot is mostly smooth and plausible. In my opinion, one should avoid to create something where losers are bad by definition and winners are always good (e.g., after WW II, the Soviets used several Nazi concentration camps for their own political prisoners, commissars of Jewish and East- European origin committed many atrocities while enforcing socialism, etc.). Before getting steamed up about something, one should learn its circumstances from different sources.