Critic Reviews

We know about Anne Frank's diary and Paul Verhoeven's masterpiece "Black Book," but director Martin Koolhoven has shed new light on what happened in Holland with a powerful and touching film.

May serve as a useful way to introduce teens to what World War II in Europe was like.

Koolhoven is able to strip away both visually and mentally our idealized cinematic notions of how the resistance fighters lived. It's a lonely existence. It's stark and it's scary. And it makes for a compelling movie.

Nothing in this film approaches the boy's-eye view of war that, say, John Boorman achieved in "Hope and Glory," but it's an affecting, if somewhat flavorless, journey.

Director Martin Koolhoven doesn't take many narrative chances, but the somber, steely cinematography and convincing performances help to carry the day.

The most compelling thing about Winter in Wartime, the Netherlands' official entry for Best Foreign Language Film at this year's Oscars, is not the story. And the story is pretty darn compelling.

It's a sturdy World War II yarn, with harrowing and heart-breaking moments sprinkled throughout.

Nothing about Koolhoven's film is stunning, but it's a solid piece of work, occasionally feeling as tense as life-and-death situations with Nazis should be.

It's got a grown-up artfulness, but Winter in Wartime could become a lot of boys' favorite movie.

An efficient, absorbing example of the form framed in a boy's coming-of-age story set in a snowbound rural Holland in 1945.