If
only the Warsaw Uprising had ended this happily. Although initially caught off
guard, the National Socialists destroyed everything in their path to put down
the insurrection, ultimately including the Great Synagogue. Still, there was
nothing to lose and much to gain from their heroism. The Polish and Jewish
resistance get the sort of victory they deserved in Jasmin Dizdar’s Chosen (trailer here), which starts its
better-late-than-never release today in Southern California.
The
old crusty grandfather will finally tell his beloved grandson Max about the
tremendous courage he witnessed during WWII. He pretends to be discussing a
fellow Jewish Hungarian named “Sonson,” but right from the start we can tell he
is modestly describing his own exploits. Sonson (as we shall still refer to him)
was a late recruit to the partisan cause, because he was preoccupied with his
fragile wife’s safety. When the new Jewish exclusion laws demanded her eviction
from the hospital, despite her recent cancer diagnosis, it sealed Sonson’s fate
as well.
On
her deathbed, he promises to find and rescue her sister Judith, a resistance
fighter recently deported to Auschwitz. As a man of his word, Sonson sets off
to Poland (hoofing it in eight days), where he joins up with the Warsaw Ghetto
resistance, in hopes their contacts can turn up a lead on Judith. Naturally, he
becomes an inspiring commander in the process.
If
you can get past the historically dubious uplifting conclusion, Chosen is a pretty solid little war
movie programmer. Essentially, it is like Defiance
with less mud and grime or a stripped-down and more straight forward Inglorious Basterds. The warfighting
scenes are surprisingly presentable for such a presumably low budget affair and
a whole lot of National Socialists get killed, so there is a good deal of
vicarious payback.
Granted,
Luke Mably is not exactly a younger analog of Harvey Keitel, who plays his
older self, but he has suitably slow-burning presence and decent action cred
for the righteously driven Sonson. Keitel essentially phones in the Princess Bride narrative wrap-around,
yet he is still intriguing to watch on screen. Emerging international Romanian
star Ana Ularu (I’m an Old Communist Hag,
The Paper Will Be Blue) plays Judith with grit and sensitivity. However,
most of the rest of the resistance are largely armed extras.
