Ashes in the Snow

Ashes in the Snow is a good, yet unsatisfying movie with the potential to have been so much better. The pace is too slow, and the characters’ arcs are predictable.

The film is heartfelt and often powerful, but sometimes too sluggish to carry maximum impact.

Director Marius A. Markevicius and screenwriter Ben York Jones fail to find much of a fresh angle on genocide and widespread cruelty.

There are a few powerful images.

Powley, a delight in “”Diary of a Teenage Girl” and “A Royal Night Out,” can be applauded for trying something darker, but the checkbox script and pedestrian direction Marius A. Markevicius, who produced Peter Weir’s escape from Siberia thriller “The Way Back,” let her down.

The depictions of degradation and sadism are arguably accurate, yes. But they’re executed in a context that’s almost entirely free of meaningfully specific historical detail, to the extent that one comes to suspect this movie of commodifying human suffering.

Filmmakers never seem to run out of footnotes to history during World War II. This one is better served in the pages of a novel. It doesn’t work on film.