Perry Kate Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

alexdeleonfilm KATYN: A stunning Grande Finale evokes a Silence of the Lambs ~ Viewed at the Annual Polish film week in Gdynia, September 18, 2007. The latest film by 81 year old Polish director Andrej Wajda, "KATYN" concerning the mass murder of Polish Prisoners of War perpetrated by the Russians in 1940 and for years either hushed up or cynically blamed on the Germans, is more than just another film by a famous director. It has become a "cause celèbre" and a national event stirring up the collective Polish memory of this incredible Russian atrocity"Katyn" is the name of a forest area outside of the city of Smolesk where over a three day period in May, 1940, 15,000 Polish POWs, mostly officers, were taken by the truckload and methodically dispatched one by one with a single bullet to the nape of the neck by agents of Stalin's NKVD. The nefarious purpose was to try to ensure that after the war there would be no high-level Polish military cadre left to oppose the Russification and Communization of Poland. (Talk about thinking ahead!)Stylistically, "Katyn" was apparently shot in "classical style" and, Mr. Wajda has stated that this is "the last film of the Polish School" -- a reference to the period of post-war Polish films of the fifties which put Poland on the international cinema map and of which a very young Wajda was the leading lightAs for the film itself, it turned out to be more like a religious experience than the mere viewing of a motion picture – which is not to say that "Katyn" is not successful on cinematic grounds alone – just that the cumulative effect was overwhelming – truly Over-Whelming. The picture starts in the middle of a bridge on dateline September 17, 1939 – a date which every Pole knows to be the infamous day on which the Russians invaded from the East to crush Poland and divide it up between themselves and the German invaders from the west. Crowds of civilians mixed with soldiers fleeing the Krauts run into another crowd fleeing the Russians –What to do? ~ One young woman with a small child tries to persuade her soldier husband to discard his uniform and flee with her to the relative safety of Krakow in the South. "I am an officer of the Polish Army – I can't do that" he states, invoking the aristocratic Polish military code which Wajda has called into question in many other films. – and so he falls into Russian custody, from which he will never return. Already the die of the film is cast and the subsequent events – the internment of the officers, the women back home trying to find out what happened to their men – the official lies – the cynicism – the desperate attempts to find out, the clinging to hope against hope and the frustration which is the body of the film, are all things completely, if painfully, familiar to just about every person in this country, even today. There are too many people still alive who went through it all. The bulk of the film takes place on the "home front" with notable female roles, especially dark-haired Maja Ostaszewska, to single out just one of several powerful distaff figures, and there is one important Russian character, an officer who tries to protect one of the protesting Polish women, played by the very popular Russian actor Sergei Garmash – a subtle indication that this film is not specifically anti-Russian – and then comes the Grand Finale.Switch to Katyn Forest. The trucks come rumbling in. The Polish officers are unloaded, one by one – and one by one shot in the back of the head – shoved screen forward into a gaping hole in the ground – bang-bang – push-push – plop-plop into the ditch – bodies with bloodied heads stacked up neatly like sacks of potatoes – then comes the bulldozer shoving loose dirt practically out of the screen and into the laps of the audience to cover up the obscenity – one upraised hand clutching a string of black rosary beads is the last to go under -- Screen goes black. End titles roll. No music. No sound. Nothing. Dead silence. One tiny flimsy attempt at a clip-clap is drowned out by the Silence of the Lambs as the audience files out without a word …No number of stars can rate this film.

KissEnglishPasto .......................................................from Pasto,Colombia...Via: L.A. CA., CALI, Colombia & ORLANDO, FL Katyn makes it painfully clear that the truth was a very scarce commodity throughout decades of Soviet domination. Considering Katyn was released nearly 20 years after the end of the Communist/Soviet era in Poland. It seems, to me at least, somewhat baffling that it took Polish film-makers so long to share these tragic and poignant true events with the world.In historical retrospect, Nazi atrocities perpetrated against Poland and its people have been well circulated and repeated tirelessly over past decades. On the other hand, there has been a virtual dearth of information regarding Soviet atrocities. "WWII was triggered by the German blitzkrieg invasion of Poland in September, 1939." is what we Americans have been told ad nauseam for decades. What is rarely ever mentioned is the simultaneous eastern invasion of Poland by Soviet forces! While Nazi aberrations such as Auschwitz and the Warsaw ghetto have been chronicled in numerous well-known films, this marks the first time, in my recollection at least, that Soviet war crimes have been dealt with openly and clearly in a movie. Katyn relates this true war time story through the interwoven lives of a dozen or so family members and friends. Within minutes of viewing, the story had me totally in its grip, and even though the eventual outcome is a historical fact we are all keenly aware of, the story unfolded in such a way as to never lose my interest.9*.....ENJOY/DISFRUTELA! Any comments, questions or observations, in English o en Español, are most welcome!

Hunky Stud This film failed to explain why stalin ordered to kill all the officers. that was still a mystery to me after watching it. it didn't have any scenes from the Russian's perspective at all. that could have made this film much more powerful. it was just one side of story. it also didn't explain in a deeper level why the russians decide to make false accusations against the German as who killed those officers.the film itself is too long and gets boring in some scenes, and it has random short stories.it does have good cinemaphotography.the history event itself is sad, but this film didn't make me feel emotional.

Mike B I was hoping this movie would work because it is about an important event in Poland during World War II. Over twenty thousand Polish soldiers were killed by the Russians prior to the German invasion in 1941. The Germans found the massacre site and 'told the truth'. Unfortunately (for obvious reasons) they were not believed (or many people were sceptical). The Russians during, and more forcefully after the war, blamed the Germans. Eventually the Russians were proved to have committed this massacre – such were the ways of Stalinist Russia.This film starts off very well with a woman (and her young daughter) trying to locate her husband. She is literally caught between Russian and German forces in 1939. She eventually learns that her husband is being held by the Russians. We feel her confusion and empathize with her plight. She becomes trapped in Russian occupied Poland. It is here that the film slowly starts to unravel (somewhat). She is staying with a Russian soldier who is also hiding another woman with her daughter. Other Russian soldiers come and take this other woman and her daughter but for whatever reason the sympathetic soldier decides to protect her. In the next scene she is now in German occupied Poland in Krakow – that seemed a questionable transition. We are then introduced to another woman – a wife of a General who is also being held prisoner by the Russians. Once more we feel their confusion and their faint hopes as they wait forlornly for news of their husbands. By wars end (mid-way through the film) a new group of characters are introduced. One is killed off after only a few scenes. Scenes introducing new sub-plots and characters shift so rapidly it becomes difficult to feel coherence.The ending is compelling and gruesome. But unfortunately there is no final wrap-up. It would have been nice to know when the world came to really know the official truth of Katyn – it was still a controversy in the mid-1970's. Did the Soviet regime ever acknowledge its' crimes?Obviously this movie was only possible after the end of the Soviet occupation of Poland in 1990 and to some extent,that in itself, makes it worthwhile to watch.