Pretty Good

Overrated

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Everything about this movie is bad. I rented it on DVD because I like WWII movies, and the poster suggested something like "Schindler's List" with a love angle ...But it just doesn't fly. The "Poet" is actually a young German soldier who spends most of the film moping and feeling sorry for himself. Herein consists, far as I can tell, his "poetic demeanor". We are also supposed to sympathize with his troubled conscience over his part in the war. But this is hard, as he is (wait for it!) a spy infiltrating the countryside to report on partisan movements and pave the way for the German invasion of first Poland, then Russia.When the Jewish couple escapes the massacre of their village, their midwife suggests they get a job on - of all places - a large German base ready for the invasion of Russia. While such employment is obviously treason on the part of Polish civilians and would be severely punished after the war, we are also asked to believe that German soldiers would knowingly accept Jewish non-prisoners as employees while the SS was killing all over the countryside.We are supposed to be awed by the female lead's love for her "poet", yet she prostitutes herself to German officers at the camp as if a matter of course. Which it would hardly have been for a Jewish village girl in 1941.The cutting is awful, and almost every scene is theatrically conceited and wholly unbelievable. There's really nothing to like about this movie - avoid at all costs.

I found this movie on DVD at Blockbuster under the above title. I was very disappointed. It was unrealistic and the plot full of holes. The German accents were almost annoying and even hard to understand. The only redeeming quality of this movie was Roy Scheider as the rabbi. At least he seemed believable. Whoever came up with the script should have watched a good Holocaust movie like Schindler's List first before subjecting the public to this mediocre stuff. Darryl Hannah talents were wasted in this film, plus she didn't seem old enough to have a grown (twenty-something) son. Forget about watching The Poet, aka Hearts of War!!!

This movie is not just bad, it is horrible! I can't believe someone actually thought it might work! Everything about this movie ain't working!the script is so absurd, the dialogs seem to be like they were written by an immature! Most of the actors come from the TV world, so the entire movie looks like an exaggerated chapter of a bad show! All the movie is based on the conception that holocaust movies bring audience so they simply try to go on the most absurd stereotypes ever! They push into the episodes so many things of different times and places just in order to increase the WWII stuff so they can hide the many mistakes made on the movie! The love story it self is so idiotic, totally ignore the problematic state the movie is taking place in!Simply awful! Don't watch!!!!!!

The Poet is a surprisingly poor to mediochre movie, trying hard to jerk a tear. 'Schmalz' describes it well - a sort of 'Fiddler on the Roof' without the charm. It looks thoroughly naive and unsubtle, as if written by a 19-year-old. It even shows the technological innovation of a 'left-handed' bolt action on a rifle. The lisping pseudo-German English dialogue was pointless and distracting to the point of trying hard to send up "Allo, allo!". Even Roy Scheider played a stereotyped rabbi - I expected "Oy, vey!!" at any moment. The battle scenes give paintballing a bad name, with more than a hint of Star Wars special effects. A waste of a good budget. The idea of lovers from opposite political poles might have worked in a re-setting of Romeo & Juliet on the eastern front, but Shakespeare this wasn't.