Coming-of-age WWII story set in Nazi-occupied Holland ought to be a slam dunk for co-writer/director Martin Koolhoven, but unexpectedly hits the rim. Hard to put a finger on just what goes wrong, but it plays like a melodrama with convenient story beats substituting for plot, trying for realism with a series of predetermined twists going wrong instead of right. Debuting Martijn Lakemeier, is touchingly rebellious as the 15-yr-old son of a small town mayor, looking up to his resistance hero Dutch Uncle and down on a father he views as little better than a collaborator. Assumptions that prove tragically misguided when they come directly into play after an RAF pilot bails and needs medical & reconnaissance help. There’s a romantic complication between his nurse sister & the wounded flier, but that’s less of a problem than the boy’s short attention span. Every time he takes his eye off the ball, some mini-disaster happens, usually to his bike. (BTW, how many bikes does this boy have? Even with wartime restrictions he seems to go thru about five.) Much of the snowy atmosphere is nicely accomplished (pity about the occasional use of fake ‘foam’ snow), but then Koolhoven will build up a race to an execution that D.W. Griffith might find too much. And why so much political naivety by the kid (and seemingly much of the town) about the deadly consequences of Nazi retribution when the film begins in January 1945, long after they must have figured things out and were waiting for the Allies certain advance.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Jamie Campbell Bower, quite good as a remarkably fast healing RAF pilot, looks like the missing link between Malcolm McDowell and Jonathan Rhys Meyers in their salad days.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Andrei Tarkovsky started his career with one of the great WWII coming-of-age films, IVAN’S CHILDHOOD/’62. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/09/ivanovo-detstvo-ivans-childhood-1962.html
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