Passchendaelen taistelu (2008) watch online HD

Paul Gross' Passchendaele provides a unique perspective of the Canadian effort during the First World War. Those who are expecting just battle scenes will likely be disappointed.

For those looking for character development, some romance, an interesting perspective on recruitment pressure, and yes -- AMAZING battle scenes -- then yes, this movie is for you.

As a Military History student, I had no issues with the historical accuracy of the movie. Paul Gross based the first 5 minutes on his grandfather's story, and the rest is historical fiction. In general, it is an excellent representation of the period, and certainly provides a much more realistic version of the soldiers' perspective on war in 1917 than many other war films out there.

I highly recommend this film.

I wanted to like Passchendaele so much!! I was so excited when I finally rented it and I don't think I've ever been so disappointed in a movie in a long time.

3/4 of the movie is a really forced, non-believable, way too over the top love story, with just terrible characters. (The officer who runs the recruitment station tops that list) Its the type of thing I expect from Canadian day time TV.. not the type of thing I was expecting from a supposed critically acclaimed movie.

I wasn't going into this expecting a non-stop action war film, I was just expecting a great movie based on the war! And I really didn't feel like it was. Other than the name of the film and the brilliant (albeit way too short) battle at the end I just don't see this as the tribute Canada's bravest deserve.

I think for a Canadian movie, technically it was superb from an effects standpoint. I think this film gets more credit than it deserves simply because of that... when the battle is on the screen, it looks, and sounds amazing, which is something you really don't expect from a Canadian film.

But it has so many moments where you just completely face-palm and say.. oh come on... (the sister/nurse just happens to be stationed at the exact same place as her brother and lover are deployed... he charges straight at the enemy trench, and Schwarzenegger style he arrives completely untouched, only to be blown crucifix style onto the wood... the gross' enemy the officer from the recruitment station travels ALL THE WAY TO France, practically into the battle, just to bring him up on some petty charges)

Come on boys, I really thought we had something here that would put Canada on the map. Just a complete disappointment. It takes more than just mentioning Canada to be a tribute to its soldiers. They deserved so much more than this.

I really cant put into words the disappointment Im feeling after watching this film.

Passchendaele is part unabashed romance and part horrific and quite graphic war story.

In film World War One has been a neglected war compared to the more morally unambiguous Second World War and the more recent Vietnam War. And films that aren't about American participation are just as neglected. Passchendaele fills that void.

The movie moves quickly and switches between home life and battlefield with surprising ease and effect. I was not bored for a moment of this movie. The movie will make you care about these people when they are at home living their lives and then fear for them at war. While the battle scenes are quite brutal, they are not sensational or exploitive, since to have made them sensational or exploitive would defeat the great effort this movie takes in showing how men had to cope with life after the war and the memories of what they lived through.

Undoubtedly there will be cynics who will decry some moments as contrived or melodramatic, but these are the small-minded who have missed the real emotion of this film. The movie is great entertainment, but there is something going on beneath the surface. This is the first time I can recall a film where the main character is someone who has been both emotionally damaged by the war, but does not succumb to it. I suspect there must be many men coming out of the war who were damaged, but quietly lived with that damage their entire lives. For that depiction alone, this is a great movie.

The movie is not without humour and it has one of the funniest seduction lines I've ever heard uttered by a woman in a movie.

The movie is entertaining, but there's a lot going on and much I haven't mentioned as I don't want to click the spoiler warning. There are scenes I'm still thinking about, which doesn't happen with every movie I see.

I really wanted to like this movie. From the buzz I'd heard, I thought this could be a great one. Sorry to say, it wasn't.

On the positive side, the battle scenes were extraordinarily well done. Granted, they were filmed in the grainy, slightly-speeded-up style of "Saving Private Ryan" or "Band of Brothers", but this is an effective style and what today's audiences have come to expect in depicting combat.

I've studied a lot of military history, extensively on WWI, and the film is technically accurate to a very fine degree. The Canadian uniforms are the correct colour, the Germans are accurately shown in a variety of clothing, the weapons are spot on. There are even things that I never thought I'd see in a movie, like accurate repros of German trench mortars. Somebody put a lot of time, effort, and money into getting these things right.

Which is great for the 20 minutes or so of the actual war movie scenes of this "war movie".

And the film "goes there" in ways that most war movies don't. The hero is suffering from neurasthenia, what we now call PTSD. The leading lady is addicted to morphine. These aspects of the story are realistic and commendable.

Sadly, the story sucks. Why do writers feel that war movies (like SPR) have to be written as family dramas? Real war doesn't work that way. All of the Mann's neighbours would have known they were German long before 1917 when their house gets trashed. In spite of getting a doctor's certificate, there's no way David Mann could have got through training and into the front line with his asthma. There's no way young men would attend a recruiting meeting if they had no intention of signing up. Absurdity piles upon absurdity.

The leading lady, Caroline Dhavernas, is lovely to look at, but why on earth am I looking at the leading lady for over an hour in a "war movie"? And she barely cracks a sweat going cold turkey from her addiction. Very pretty; not very real.

In a breakthrough for Canadian movies, the bad guy has an English accent, and he gets killed in the end. Just like American movies. Yay.

But the film finally lost me as Paul Gross did the Stations of the Cross through the mud of Flanders, wound in his side and everything. What on earth was he thinking as he wrote this? I dunno, but "All Quiet On The Western Front" made a much better job of capturing the pathos of war, and that was 78 years ago.

Colour me very, very disappointed.

At last a genuine Canadian movie... Calgary is Calgary... The Americans didn't win the battle, didn't even turn up anywhere... There were no Stars and Stripes in every office. Okay, the plot --- a sort of WW1 Saving Private Ryan effort set against the bloody Belgian battle --- is a little far fetched. But the scenes --- both in 1916 Calgary and in the mud and horror of the battlefield --- are as good as those in any WW1 movie I've seen. There are believable characters well portrayed both in the script and by the actors. The effects are superb. The lighting and cinematography are sensitive and creative. And how very impressive that Paul Gross was a triple threat man. He wrote it, he directed it and he starred in it. That totals 300% This is as good as they come.

On a scale of 1 to 10 I would give this film a –9. The themes are trite, hackneyed, and, frankly, an insult to the memory of all those who served or died at Passchendaele. To begin with, the film has very little to do with that battle. So why call it Passchendaele? The director would have been more accurate to call the film Passion in Dale or Sex on the Battlefield or Something Silly in Passchendaele. If the battle is only a backdrop to the plot, then don't mislead by calling it by the name that immediately invokes the battle. At least the English Patient had the good sense not to be titled El Alamein! I mention the English Patient, which I also disliked, but it is quantum leaps better than this film, which seems a very weak copy. Nurse meets soldier; nurse falls in love with soldier; soldier dies before nurse. Mr. Gross have you every heard of, read, or seen War and Peace? Perhaps the film should have been called Mr. Gross Goes to War since the director is front and center of this film. Of course sergeant Gross, a.k.a. Michael Dunne the protagonist is a hero, but not just any hero. Rather, he is a Canadian hero, heck no, not just Canadian, but an Albertan hero! You know what I mean, the silent cowboy type, man of action and integrity, but heck, no hick here, he can also wax poetic when talking about the land before his girl. And oh yes, you have to have horses here, even at the end, the riderless horse, no doubt about to carry our hero's soul to heaven. We see his noble side: helping his girl kick the drug habit, after all, got to make the film relevant you know, and it seems he does it all in one night, because if the scene was meant to portray several nights or weeks I sure didn't get it. Besides, since the evil English major already had his eye on the good sergeant, don't you think he would have known? Oh yes, clichés. The spit and polish bombastic English major, the pukka, pukka type who will be shown up as incompetent and a coward. He stands in total contrast to our down-to-earth Hoser true-man-of-action hero. We had the same representation in the film about the Canadian ascent of Everest: spit and polish but all hot air. Well, guys give it a break. When you repeat the same path in literature or film you become guilty of thinking in clichés! But let's get back to our hero, Mr. Gross, a.k.a. sergeant what's-his-name. He can't be perfect now, can he? He has to have a flaw. You know the old story about heroes having a fatal flaw. Well the good sergeant's flaw is that he shoved a bayonet through the head of a young German asking for mercy. Oops, you know he will have to pay for that. The clichés in this film are nothing compared to the idiocy of the plot. Boy meets girl. Girl says No. Then Maybe. Then Yes. But there is a hitch; she has a brother, who in his mixed up passion of lust-love, hatred and patriotism is tricked into signing up by his scheming future father-in-law. So off he goes and our good sergeant goes off to look after him as he had promised his girl. Well you know what is going to happen. He will save the boy's life and die. Yes die, because that is how that clichéd story goes. But wonder of wonders, it's not just the sergeant who turns up by the side of the boy; the baddie English major also turns up at the front in the same battalion because he wants to get back at the sergeant! At this point, ladies and gentlemen, we have flown the realm of common sense and entered the never-never coo-coo land! An over-aged major who served in the Boer War 18 years earlier, he decides to give up the comfort of his recruiting job to get back at our hero! But wait, it gets even better. The nurse also turns up at the battle. What incredible coincidence! Well, you know what's going to happen next. They just have to have sex, and of course, it's the nurse who initiates it because, after all, our upright, ethical, cowboy is above such things. Director Gross seems to like flying bodies, so the typical battle scene is one of bodies flying about like men on a trapeze. But that is nothing compared to the tour de force: the wounded brother hanging like a Christ on the cross on the German line, and, of course, our hero has to get to the boy to save him. But just to make sure that the audience understands the scale of justice and the stupidity of war, Director Gross has to hit us over the head with the symbol: shell shocked or wounded young Germans, kids in fact; remember, the good sergeant killed one in the heat of battle. So now we are primed for his death, but not before he heroically carries the boy back on his makeshift cross. Our hero is not only a man of integrity and tough, but he is super strong! He's been shot – serious enough to die from his wound but he still manages to carry the wounded boy back through the mud, the German officer in charge having given the nod – ah yes, we must also have nobility in the battle front. I forgot to add, my friend mentioned that in the midst of trench warfare, mud, rain and blood, Sergeant Gross had wonderfully white teeth! But then, he is an Albertan super hero.

Wow. Great flick!

Besides being an admitted movie addict, I'm also a retired professional soldier and a combat veteran who's served in multiple theaters of conflict.

I usually find myself quietly disappointed with war movies in general, and their vain, highly stylized, cliché-laden attempts to realistically portray infantry warfare, and high-intensity warfare's effects on soldiers. Film-makers invariably seem to fall far short in their attempts to capture the essence of what war can be (or was) like, and what exposure to it can do to the people involved, both mentally and physically.

To his great credit, I think that in Passchendaele Paul Gross seems to have actually managed to capture a reasonably authentic glimpse into both the nature of such hellish environments and the men caught up in them.

The acting was superb. The performances were so convincing that the notion that I was just sitting watching a movie didn't even occur to me until the credits began to roll by, I was so totally engrossed.

This film was easily one of the best that I've seen in quite some time.

I'll definitely be keeping my eyes open for any future films by Paul Gross. Passchendaele stands as an extremely impressive testimonial to his obvious talents.

I was happy and excited to see a movie about Canadian soldiers in the First World War, but disappointed with the product. That young Canadians volunteered to a squalid life in the trenches, lost injured soldiers to the muddy fields, and had aid stations that operated at a fever pitch without antibiotics or, often, anesthetics -- these all show that there is a story to be told here. A difficult and heart-rending story yes, but certainly a story that can stand on its own. If told deftly.

The makers of this film tell us about so many things they could have more effectively shown. This is a film, not a book, and film is a visual medium so show us what you mean don't tell us. For example, the scene of the doctor in Calgary giving a little presentation describing battlefield wounds and passing around a piece of shrapnel could have been far more effectively conveyed visually on the battlefield. So why only spend 30 minutes in Europe ?

SHOW us why the Germans called the Canadians stormtroopers, and THEN TELL us that is the moniker the enemy bestowed on us. See how this could have worked ?

That there was a romantic interest was something I expected. This is a common device used to show the humanity of people who will later do brutal things. Think "History of Violence". Once again though the film relies too much on little speeches and pronouncements to tell us about their feelings rather than showing people relating to each other by how they treat each other. Vets of the First and Second World War are renown for their reticence, so that 1.5hrs of the movie especially didn't ring true.

The "stations of the cross" scene is some measure of just how far from the reality the film makers wandered. I've heard of the First World War trenches described as weeks of boredom and anxiety punctuated by short periods of shear terror and confusion. To me this movie was weeks of eager anticipation followed by hours of growing disappointment and frustration.

So I guess I'm still waiting for a movie that can really convey the pride, professionalism, necessary brutality and heart-rending emotional aftermath of Canadian soldiers who've seen battle. I guess I wanted a film that made me feel a combination of pride, disgust and grief and this film failed to do so.

I would nominate this film for cinematography, costume, special effects and maybe audio and acting but not screenplay or "best film" certainly. And I don't think more money would have fixed this.

I had really high hopes for this movie. The trailers kind of sucked me in. To me it looked like a Canadian war movie, maybe like Saving Private Ryan in realism. There was a flash of love story in the preview. Would it be 80 percent war movie, and 20 percent Love story? Nope, completely opposite, and the love story is bogged down in a "Canadianized" slant, that ruined it for me. They couldn't just leave the nice guy to meet the nice girl. They have to make the nice girl a morphine addict. This is just an example of the rest of the story. Don't get me wrong, i love a good love story (The Notebook!) But not this one. And the whole crucifixion scene??? Unrealistic, out of context, over edited. On the plus side, the scenery around southern Alberta was spectacular.

Most of us have one or more great-grandfathers, other relatives or even friends ( I knew a WW1 Veteran as a small child, he was a pensioner with my great-grandmother) who fought with the Canadian Corps in Europe.

It was a brutal & dirty war where our soldiers paid in blood for Canada to be recognized as a nation. Moreover, they got the job done, without fanfare or banners: farm boys and clerks from a colony became the elite fighting formation of the western front.

The film depicts all of the above, the price each paid, in physical and emotional pain, in lives lost and friendships made.

Paul Gross has dome it again. A beautiful movie, without fanfare or banners that says it all, in subtle moments and firm assertions.

Thank you, Mr Gross.

I don't want anyone (most especially Canadians) to take my criticism of this movie to mean that I have anything but the height of respect for the courage and sacrifice of those who fought and died in WW1. I had the honor of being the first member of our family to pay their respects at the grave of my father's uncle who was killed in action in Belgium in 1916. Standing in the midst of those endless rows of gravestones was one of the most emotional things I've ever done. The futility and scale of loss endured by that generation is beyond imagination. I have also studied this period in history in some detail. That said, I was really interested in seeing this movie. Sadly I was very disappointed. The plot is so unbelievable that it ruins what should have been a realistic account of one of the saddest and most tragic periods in history. It's best described as "Mills & Boon" meets "All Quiet on the Western Front" with "Mills& Boon" winning the day. The film tries to be a war movie and a romance, but succeeds in neither and has to resort to visual clichés of the poorest kind, and a plot tissue-paper thin . I hope somebody makes a fitting tribute to the Canadian dead of WW1 soon, because this is defiantly not it.

I am not familiar with the source of Paul Gross's passion for this story but drawn to it in a big way he certainly was. As well I was not familiar with his work as an actor (at all). From this perspective and knowing a bit about what the battles of WW1 were really like, especially from what I've read about it from the Canadian soldiers perspective, I was strongly attracted to this film. I watched it with several other wars and battles in my mind, starting off with the American Revolutionary War (recently watched the revisionist bloodbath of "The Patriot"), the American Civil War (with the Ken Burns series memorized, Saving Private Ryan and many other WW2 films in the mind.

The opening of Passchendaele is awesome as it explodes left and right in close fighting between some Canadian and German troops. Paul Gross's character tries to save his penned in men from being cut to pieces but things go awry and more are killed on both sides. The scene ends (I won't spoil it) with the death of a German soldier that leaves Gross with very bad memories. While not taking sides about how soldiers fight, I have heard it said that Canadian soldiers were renowned for often NOT taking prisoners, leaving any enemy soldier dead where they found them. IN particular the Devils Brigade that fought against the Germans in the Italian campaign in WW 2 were famous for terrifying the Germans, who often woke up to find their companions dead by their side, with chilling notes left by the Canadian soldiers, telling them that they were coming again.

The middle part of the film is the longest part of the picture and it takes place back home where a different type of drama takes shape. It covers (what feels to be) historically accurate portraits, about how seasoned soldiers were used by the military to rouse up the support of young Canadian men so that they would enlist to go overseas. All of this was depicted against a virulent background of anti-German hatred (called the Huns in the movie). The last part of the film pretty predictably ends up back at the main battlefield.

Without giving away key parts of the drama of how people fell in love and went off to war, let us just say that there is much to have heart break over when the film is done. As surely as it must have been in that and in every war. I found the battle scene re-creations to be on the same level as Saving Private Ryan. As such I must say that it was bloody, gory, awesome, nightmarish and sickening. We don't see the soldiers using gas against each other but we see much close hand to hand fighting, with bayonet's, with single bolt rifles and with shells going off all over the place. All of this battle is fought in endless rain and endless mud. Of all the wars that I have seen and studied, very few eclipse the personal suffering of all soldiers that fought in WW1 in France and Holland. Never mind the bumbling totally incompetent military leadership. This film is about bravery, foolish romantic notions about heroism and sacrifice. One walks away feeling the heartache of the main story but seen in the context of the overall battle, when you think about it, the story is just one crater amongst hundreds of thousands that have been blasted out of the mud. I think that Gross should be proud of his efforts and we should stop at least once a year and give pause to remember those who of their own free will went off to fight a battle in distant lands for foreign people, all fought at such a huge expense of young lives.

I really don't know when I have been so proud to be Canadian! Paul Gross, no longer a corny Mountie, has told a tale so full of truth in such a Canadian way. I was born during the Second World War and raised on the jingoistic stuff that poured out of Hollywood. Even though I studied History in university I did not think of the quiet heroism that created a nation out of part of the British Empire. That's because no one had told our story except at Remembrance Day ceremonies where I saw old men and women selling poppies and talking about something called "trench warfare". I could not relate to them because I did not know the horrors they suffered and because our history was so "dry". I did not know of the ways that Canadians were sent to slaughter by the British High Command because they had absolutely no idea of how to command and no wish to waste British lives when the colonies would do.

Well, Paul has done something that I have longed for. No more are we silent about our heroes; no longer are we ignorant. The battle scenes are, at times, unwatchable. They are too real. The bigotry back home is reprehensible but.........it happened. In this film the reality of the "colony of Canada" is made quite understandable in the father who, confused by his loyalties to Germany and the Colony of Canada fought and died for the wrong side and condemned his children to the unthinking cruelty and prejudice of all classes of people all too willing to believe the propaganda that sucked young men into the maelstrom of World War One and called those terribly injured - mentally and physically - by the war, cowards because they could not go back to the madhouse.

Gross' character is heroic not because he was extraordinary in an unrealistic way but rather because he does what he has to. Sarah finds herself in the sacrifices of war; her brother becomes a man and all find solace in the land - our Canada. How Canadian!

The romance is wonderful and sad but uplifting, reminding us as it does, that love is much more than sex but that sex between two people who have experienced much together and love each other is beautiful. This is a love story for all time and I thank Mr. Gross for it

Perhaps the best way I can express how much the film moved me is to say that at the conclusion of the movie; as the credits rolled by accompanied by actual Canadian footage from the "War to End All Wars", no one in the audience spoke or moved. All left silently at the end. This is the wonder and power of Passchendaele.

I can understand the appreciation from Canadians for this movie- it is rare to see a wide release film that depicts their countrymen as the admittedly brilliant fighting force that they were in WWI. That does not excuse this movie, which falls victim to seemingly every war movie cliché in the book. The extensive use of glow effects in the early Calgary scenes, the change in lighting and weather prior to the return to the battlefield, the atrocious dialog- with such rich source material, its pathetic that the filmmakers had to draw on such a tired premise as this- as others have said, its more or less Saving Private Ryan in WWI, down to the over-saturated filter during the battle scenes. And don't even get me started on the heavy-handed symbolism of the climactic scene, which spells out "overdoing it" in so many different ways. Yes, we get it. War is hell, but a few good men can deliver us. Yes, I understand, its their cross to bear. BUT YOU DON'T HAVE TO LITERALLY SHOW THE MAIN CHARACTER BEARING A CROSS!

There is a thing called subtlety, which Passchendaele sadly lacks. Instead, its an overblown farce of a movie, which succumbs to all the antiquated and outdated notions of the worst tradition of big-budget war epics. In a way, its like the war it purports to represent: meaningless, ineptly commanded, and ultimately irrelevant. Avoid at all costs unless you go for a laugh.

My God! Watching this film, I found it hard to believe that it was done with a straight face. Cliché riddled, irrelevant and soporific subplots, truly laughable, wooden, anachronistic dialogue, stilted acting, the miscasting of virtually every character (with Gross himself taking the blue ribbon in this regard), the movie is an embarrassment. Indeed, its hard to know what's more embarrassing - the movie itself or the fact there are so many reviewers whose patriotism makes them blind to its stink and causes them to heap praise upon it. I'm embarrassed that people can be so misguided and let their need to boost Canada interfere with their critical faculties. But I digress.

In fact, it was obvious that the film was going to be dreadful within minutes of the opening titles. By this I mean that it actively oozed CBC - the sets, the vistas, the type of lens used, EVERYTHING just reeked of a CBC influence. Except for the battle scenes, there was a pervasive sense that one was watching yet another prototypical, Sunday 7 PM, CBC special presentation. It is actually sad that Paul Gross invested so much of his heart and soul in this production.

I've given it a '2' out of 10, rather than a mere '1', to reflect the fact that it had at least one redeeming quality - it ended.

I had the Honor of seeing the "Premier" In Halifax tonight and I predict big things for this movie. The story is great, its not overly dramatic like certain WWII films that have been coming out, but instead relies on a simple story that lets you know the characters better. You follow Sgt Dunne from the opening scenes on the front back home to life in Calgary. Although this film boasts a "The birth of Canada" in the trailer it does not blow you full of patriotism. You see the graves at the end of the film from Passchendaele and real footage from the Canadians in WWI. Paul Gross nails this movie by showing you what it was like to fight in a trench war, in the mud and amongst your friends bodies. I did an interview with him (appearing in "THE SMU JOURNAL" next week) and talked to him about how Canadians may relate to this film in following generations due to the dwindling number of Canadian WWI survivors. Currently there is one remaining. But what I was impressed by was watching the characters struggle in this war torn environment. Gross told us that 4 months was spent designing the set. 50 Acres of land had to have the topsoil removed, then craters dug and followed by a few hundred trees being burned and replanted. Then the area was soaked for 3 weeks in order to keep the ground from holding more water. Then the actors went to work. Just watch how difficult this "moonscape" is to move in and you will have a better understanding on life in the trenches. During our interview I stated that "The imagery from this film will tell more then the script" and Gross replied, your f****** right it will. During the filming I had a brief glimpse of what it was like to be there."

Again, great story and fantastic imagery will put this film in the running. It doesn't matter if you are Canadian or not, you will see a great story unfold. Not a traditional war film.

Many people have put forth criticisms regarding so called holes in the historical details of the Film. However, This is not a film about the war's specifics as much as it is a film about people. The characters are rich, and their veridical treatment informs the film throughout. The battle of Passchendaele may be one of the contexts surrounding the characters, but it is the characters that predominate the emotional ebb and flow of the film. This is a portrayal of human beings- fallible human beings-who are thrust onto the battlefield (abroad and at home) while still remaining human. It is the story of people trying to hold on to the relationships that are inherent in all of us, when confronted by the overwhelming tribulations of a World War (which affects the communities they call home as wells as the battlefield). The 'sex scene' exudes passion, as a couple in love fears for their lives and safety. In turbulent war times, their primary concern is consummating their relationship. Each instant might be their last possible opportunity to share the intimacy they have longed for.

Although, at points, the score is very stereotypically in the fashion of small screen Canadian melodrama, the characters continue to resonate with vitality; a vitality that might lead one to expect to draw blood if they were to prick the movie screen with a thumb tack. The battle scenes (which this reviewer sees as an extension certain characters' intricacies and depth) rival, if not surpass, those that were offered to us by Spielberg in the opening sequences of Saving Private Ryan.

The film conveys passion and desire amongst the insurmountable propriety of the times, in contrast to the preponderance of human connection within a tempestuous social climate. When hard times prevail we only have our humanity to rely on and we only have others to rely on in order to maintain our humanity.

This is a intensely emotion film portraying relationships in times of war.

Passchendaele is a artistic display of Beauty.

A beautiful combination of historical account and personal drama make this film multidimensional and gripping. I was surprised to hear several people in the audience weeping, though not surprised by their emotions. This is perhaps just one of many historical events that have been forgotten, but embody the character of people in that time and under those conditions. This film should bring a great deal of pride to Canadians who did sacrifice greatly for the freedom of others. People should also be very proud of Paul Gross for creating such a well made movie and gathering together a collection of talented people to portray the supporting characters. I will look forward to Paul Gross's next film.

This has got to be the worst Canadian movie I've ever seen.

I guess it affects me more because I had such high hopes for this movie. I even bought the book, when I saw it on sale at Costco, but then I began to suspect the worst with the huge grade 2 sized typeset that could be read in 2 hours, and that nobody had dared claim credit for writing the book.

How fitting that this battle was fought around "Passiondale" - it couldn't be a more fitting title for the movie. Most of the film was romance and passion developed around Calgary to the finale in the middle of the battlefield.

I accept that movies need to entertain and so can tolerate that reality often needs to go by the wayside, but this was way too far off the mark.

All the characters are so artificial and cookie cutter. "Patriotic" old folks gleefully sending their children off to gruesome death (kids stupidly eager for adventure) and mercilessly hounding the slackers who don't volunteer. There's always a few idiots around like that, but it seems from this film that most of Calgary was filled with them. After all why did we come to Canada, but to escape from the European way of life?

Battle scenes are properly gruesome, but otherwise illogically worse than anything I've seen in American war movies. I'm not in the least offended by putting Christ figures into the movie, I just think it was totally stupid and cheezy as done here. Hero gets blasted somehow into a guy on the cross figure and both sides stop butchering each other and cooperate to take down this blasphemy. Huh???

I've seen some excellent Canadian movies, but this is not one of them.

In 1917, in the World War I, the veteran Sergeant Michael Dunne (Paul Gross) is wounded in the front and is nursed by Nurse Sarah Mann (Caroline Dhavernas). He is diagnosed neurasthenic and returns to his hometown Calgary to work in the recruitment. Michael fall in love for Sarah, but is not corresponded. When Sarah's asthmatic brother David (Joe Dinicol) forces his enlistment to be recognized by the father of his girlfriend Cassie Walker (Meredith Bailey), Sarah believes Michael is the responsible and blames him for the engagement of her brother in the army. Michael enlists using his mother last name to protect David and they are sent to the no man's land in the front of the Battle of Passchendaele.

"Passchendaele" is a good romance in times of war. The marketing is totally wrong since the romance prevails over the war genre. The cinematography is extremely beautiful, highlighting the magnificent landscapes and scenarios. The gorgeous and sweet Caroline Dhavernas recalls Lara Flynn Boyle and has a great performance. The characters could be better developed and there are some parts that do not work well, like the annoying David Mann, who does not deserve the sacrifice of Michael; the last scene with the analogy to Jesus Christ is awful and unnecessary. But in general, "Passchendaele" is an above average movie. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "A Batalha de Passchendaele" ("The Battle of Passchendaele")

"Passchendaele" gives us twenty plus minutes of brutal, miserable, genuinely horrific trench warfare towards the end of the film. During that time it is the sort of gritty, relentlessly (but not gratuitously) violent war film many will and have gone into the theater thinking it would be. Apart from the short five to ten minutes which opens the film there are no other scenes of battle, and the movie is better for it.

What Paul Gross has attempted here is to give Canadians their own war epic (and on a minuscule budget when compared to most Hollywood war films). The film is not interested in philosophizing and 'making a point'. It's something like a far, far better version of what Michael Bay was doing with "Pearl Harbor"; the film is an unabashed romance and period drama, with Passchendaele being not the focus, but the event at the end of the road which the audience knows is coming.

Paul Gross has achieved something with "Passchendaele". We see so many Canadian films every year, but very few if any of them are ever about Canada, about being Canadian (and the film doesn't shy away from depicting some of the darker sides of that, we see the hatred and pain many German Canadians experienced simply due to their origin reflected in Dunn's love interest). More than just that, "Passchendaele" is a love letter to Canada, and although I might be biased as a Calgarian and Albertan (where the film is set), I think that every Canadian will find a reason to be proud in this film, in spite of the fact that it's depicting a war where nobody really knew what they were fighting for. "Passchendaele" has its flaws. There's some really, really heavy-handed symbolism (which thankfully doesn't ruin the film) and cloying sentimentality. While I normally abhor cloying sentimentality, "Passchendaele" must be doing something right because I was with it every step of the way. There isn't a moment in this film where the characters don't feel real, where the story doesn't affect you, where the romance doesn't feel genuine (including a love scene which could have been laughable but ended up being one of the year's most beautiful scenes).

"Passchendaele" is Paul Gross' heart poured onto the screen. The man is perhaps best known for his light-hearted role on "Due South", but he is a phenomenal dramatic actor and his performance here is probably the best I've seen this year from a male lead. You can feel his character's pain, his joy, his suffering, his love. Gross spent 12 years on the screenplay, and while I'd love to say the final result is perfect it is not. It is still, however, a screenplay so filled with genuine emotion and such passion that it ends up being something rare and special. It's a wonderful, wonderful film, one which attempts no grand statement on what war is or should be, it simply shows us the emotions of those involved in it.

I could go on at length complimenting the wonderful cast, explaining the story, discussing the film in detail, but that would be pointless. It's a film every Canadian should see. I honestly don't know if there's anything here for non-Canadians, although I imagine the film is populist enough to entertain most people (there's even a healthy dose of well-written humor, and the movie has one line so hilarious and yet oddly seductive that I'll probably never forget it). I've said it already, but I'll say it again: writer, director, and star Paul Gross has achieved something special with "Passchendaele". It's a tribute to many things. Less importantly perhaps it is a tribute to Calgary and Alberta (only a Calgarian could have made this film), and more importantly it's a tribute to the pure, certain feeling of true love, to our war veterans, to the troops currently fighting in Afghanistan, to all Canadians, and ultimately and most importantly to Canada.

Some excellent depiction of war - witness the opening scenes as a machine gun stops and blows a body back, rather than the usual all fall over shot: some nice romantic interest that is mainly not overplayed; and a hero who suffers but does not crack under the pressure of 'hell is war.' But the film - and you have to say Paul Gross as writer and director - goes over the top just a couple of times too often. He packs the story with real incident, viz his girlfriend is of German stock and her house is trashed, but very late in the war so a bit unbelievable, but an occurrence in countries with new immigrants, and loses the audience rather. The worst moments come when Gross drags his mate pinned up on a makeshift cross across No Man's Land(A similar moment to the excruciating slo mo in 'Children of God' as the fighting stops to let a pregnant woman pass!) and the quick coupling as shells burst all around the battlefield. A pity, a great pity, because the movie has a lot to portray in that quiet Canadian way which shows the strengths of the country but also its' inability to make its' cultural and artistic presence felt. Perhaps the film could have done with a little more 'Canadaism' by showing the troops preparing for the fight, rather than Gross meeting his sweetheart at a nearby field hospital. But an interesting and very faithful depiction of a clichéd moment in time.

It's really kind of sad that on election night only mere days ago that many Canadian TV stations were glued to CNN to watch the American debate between two politicians that have nothing to do with our country. It is also sad that when I ask today's youth if they have ever heard of the B.N.A act, maybe 1 out of 10 know what it is and what it means to Canada. When I was in Grade 6, I had a teacher named Mr. Brett who was so unabashedly proud to be Canadian that it made us laugh at times. He knew the provinces, capitals, lakes, native history, wars, documents and anything else about Canada that was important. We need more teachers like him. Today, there is nothing funny about the patriotism he showed us 25 years ago. It is something that is severely lacking in our country today.

Paul Gross has made a film that if nothing else, should get the youth of this country to appreciate what it meant and what it means to be Canadian and why it is paramount to remember where we came from before you can get to where you want to go. I have the life I do because of the men and women portrayed in this film. Both of my grandfathers served in WWII, and both of them have since passed. I wish they could of been around to see this film, they would of been proud of the job Paul Gross did.

Passchendaele is the story of Canada's contribution to the Great War. It takes place after Vimy Ridge and begins with Michael Dunne in the middle of a firefight with the Germans. He manages to save some of his buddies by throwing a grenade into the Germans stronghold. As he enters the area he just bombed, there is one young boy left alive. Dunne puts his bayonet into his forehead.

He is sent home as a war hero, but he also went AWOL, not being able to deal with his guilt of killing a young boy for no good reason. This is where he meets Sara, the nurse who helps bring him back to health. He falls in love with her and they begin a romance that she is fearful of. She tells him she could fall so hard for him and that the one rule she has is that he doesn't die. He gives her his word that he will live up to that promise. Eventually he is thrust back into the war when her brother enlists to win the hand of a young woman who's father is just a little duplicitous when he tells the young man that to prove his worth for his daughter's hand, he must go to war, even though he has asthma.

Passchendaelle explores the proud moments in our countries young history, and it explores some of the not so cherished moments. While we were quick to lionize our soldiers when they were on the battle field, we were just as quick to harass some of them when they came home. Also, in the name of national security, Canadians born in this country were forced to leave their homes because their ancestors were German. This problem got worse as time went on culminating in WWII with the Japanese enslavement.

The apex of this story is the battle scenes. They are raw, visceral and sometimes tough to watch. What is also incredible about the film is how cold it makes you feel. Many of the battle scenes are in torrential rainstorms, and they are to their chest in mud at times. You feel the frigid water against your skin and while watching the film you thank the heavens you aren't there. Paul Gross did a fantastic job filming this and he has gone that extra mile to make you feel what our ancestors felt while fighting this war.

This is a fantastic film and it should clean up at the Genies this year. I want to thank Paul Gross for making such a stunning film and one that all Canadians should be proud of. It doesn't matter if you are a native of this great country, or if you immigrated here, it is because of the people this movie portrays that we have this country we do. Do our ancestors proud and see this film. You can watch W. or Max Payne on DVD. See this one at the theater.

One final note is that although I saw this film with a small crowd, it was the middle of the afternoon, when the film ended, no one left. The credits rolled, and every single one of the 50 or so people in the theater just watched. There was real footage of Canadian soldiers during the Great War. Those images could of been of my grandfather. It might of been one of their grandfathers. It was all very moving and made me feel very proud of my ancesters. Thank you again Paul.

9/10

For the first hour,this movie was utterly slow-moving..I almost fell asleep.The slow tempo of the music,boring boy meets girl scenes, and all around stupid sex scenes for no added purpose were completely disappointing to me. I would have loved to see a true sense of Calgary in 1917...more street scenes, shops, what life was really like.

What was the background of WW1? Why did it begin..what about the Battle of Passchendaele? I wasn't even sure if it was in France or Belgium. The characters are not fleshed out at all! And although I know Paul Gross wrote,produced,acted,and directed this movie,why was he in almost ALL the scenes?? Is he that egocentric?

It is no wonder the movie has dropped off the radar after such a short time. Even though to its credit, the later scenes of the battle were well done and the scenery is beautiful, along with great cinematography, still I left the theater feeling very dissatisfied. There were only eight other people watching along with my son and I. No Wonder!! It is great to have a movie honoring Canada's loss of 600,000 in this battle, but this was not a well made movie. The script and acting were very mediocre aside from a few good scenes. All in all,I would not recommend this movie. It is more enjoyable and accurate to watch the History Channel's "The War In Colour" on TV about Canada's participation in WW1 and WW2.

I really wanted to like this film. Instead, I found myself laughing out loud at the never-ending clichés. Good Grief! This movie was more like a cheesy, Sunday afternoon romance - made for TV - than a fine piece of Canadian cinema! The historical aspect of Passchendaele was kept to a minimum, the beginning and ridiculous ending, and we were served a love story that no one really cared about and that had the audience in my theater groaning. I'm not suggesting the movie should have been more in the way of a documentary, I am suggesting a little more balance please, and a far more interesting sub topic than the obvious little love story this movie presented. It had the feel of a Road to Avonlea episode, except way longer.