Despite a strong cast this WWII movie struggles to make any emotional impact.
The Zookeeper's Wife tells the account of keepers of the Warsaw Zoo, Antonina and Jan Zabinski, who helped save hundreds of people and animals during the German invasion.
This is a fascinating story, one that isn’t commonly known and to that end the movie serves its purpose of telling the facts (with necessary cinematic exaggerations). However, over the last few years nearly 100 WWII films have been released, the market is over-sutured. This means that any war film needs to stand apart from the crowd and this one doesn’t. The mediocre script with the uninteresting cinematography fail to catch the audiences’ attention. Jessica Chastain and Daniel Brüel are excellent and their tension is beautifully captured on-screen, but it doesn’t sell the film - it keeps it at a steady pace.
Overall a great story with poor execution, it’s another passable WWII story.
3 Stars
Review by Benjamin Maio Mackay
Screening courtesy of Roadshow Entertainment
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