not horrible nor great

Masterful Cinema

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The Poet is a drama film starring Colm Feore, Roy Scheider, Kim Coates and Daryl Hannah. It was written by Jack Crystal and directed by Damian Lee. It was released in the United States as Hearts of War.At the dawn of World War II, a rabbi's daughter and a disenchanted German soldier fall in love and are separated by the war. They struggle on a perilous journey to find one another.A young German officer and the daughter of a Rabbi find their blooming relationship threatened by the onset of World War II in director Damian Lee's emotional war romance. The setting is German occupied Poland, and Europe is finally feeling the full devastation of Hitler's might. German Officer Oskar and his Jewish girlfriend Rachel are deeply in love, but tragically torn apart by the violent village massacres that spread like a plague across the land. Convinced that she will never be reunited with her true love, expectant mother Rachel reluctantly marries respectable Jewish man Bernard, who longs to earn her love by raising her child as his own. Later, when Rachel and Oskar unexpectedly cross paths amidst the violence of the Russian front line, a sudden tragedy prompts one man to make the ultimate sacrifice.This account of the World War II star-crossed love between a rabbi's daughter and a war-hating officer wants very much to be taken seriously. Unfortunately,this proves impossible, since the script, casting and wartime atmosphere play as pure make-believe.Also,the audience is herded from cliché to unintentional farce to insult-to-its-intelligence movie that should have been thought carefully before made.

I thought I'd seen WWII done in just about every possible way, but this is the first time I've seen a movie involving German soldiers traipsing through the Polish/Russian countryside gathering information on partisan cells. If only it were done better, and without the ridiculous plot, I'd have been very interested, but it went wrong almost from the start. Terrible screenplay, horrible weird accents, silly love triangle plot etc & etc. While watching it I didn't realize the small part of the rabbi was played by Roy Scheider, who I thought had died before this movie was made, and it amazed me that the actor was so much like that great actor, and at how well the part was being played in such an otherwise poorly acted movie. I caught Scheider's name on the closing credits. A pity such a fine performance was wasted in such a poor movie. Saw this under the DVD title 'Hearts of War.' Thankfully I bought it for a dollar.

After reading some of the bad feedback from other reviews, I decided to watch it anyway. Unfortunately, they were all spot on. Its rather a shame too, as the it 'looked' quite authentic with some decent effort made towards costume and setting. Even the cinematography was at a decent standard. However, everything else was pretty bad, terrible even. The main thing that let it down was the bad script which led to some appalling dialogue and acting at times. Some scenes are laughable its that bad. The funniest scene been at 43 minutes when a boom mic appears in shot for about 10 seconds. I've given it a 3 simply for the mise en scene.

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!!!!!!