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Lots of films have been made about the Holocaust, however none has transported me into the experience more than this film. Director Roman Polanski (CHINATOWN, ROSEMARY’S BABY) has assembled scenes of the tragedy similar to the horrors that we have seen before, but he presents them from the eyes of a man just trying to survive.

The story follows the true-life story of famed Polish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody, SUMMER OF SAM). In college, I read the book, NIGHT, by renowned Holocaust survivor and scholar Elie Wiesel, which depicted how the Nazi’s inhumane treatment of the Jews made some of the Jews inhumane themselves. To me that is the saddest thing about the atrocities. To beat a human down so much that they almost cease to be a human. This film shows some of that, which brings a unique emotional power to the film that other Holocaust films have not. Szpilman isn’t presented as a hero, but a survivor and a witness. He did what he had to do to live, but was able to retain his identity throughout.

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A lot was made of the fact that Tom Hanks (BIG) has playing a mean-as-nails assassin. Well, in reality he’s the softest mean-as-nails assassin I’ve ever seen. Maybe because it’s Hanks you just can’t buy him as cold-blooded, but I’ve seen a lot more intimidating killers than Michael Sullivan. I’m not saying that Hanks was bad, I just don’t think that he comes off as mean as the film wanted him to be.

The story is a simple revenge flick, which has Sullivan gunning for the killer of his family, who happens to be the son of the top gangster, John Rooney (Paul Newman, THE STING). Rooney is like an adopted father to Sullivan. Rooney even loves Sullivan more than his own son Connor (Daniel Craig, LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER). This situation creates bad blood and, following Sullivan’s oldest son Michael Jr. (Tyler Hoechlin, TRAIN QUEST) witnessing a murder, leads to the slaughter of Sullivan’s family.

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This is the second time that I’ve seen this Best Picture winner from 1986 and I liked it better this time. But I still can name war pictures that came prior and after this one that say more about the insanity and pointlessness of war. From that negative note, I will say that this film contains wonderful performances from an impressive cast and the cinematography creates an equally claustrophobic and chaotic feeling that heightens the overall mood of the film.

Charlie Sheen gives his best performance as Chris Taylor, a confused college student from a well-off family that enlists in the infantry to see what life is really like. He quickly discovers that war isn’t life — it’s hell. Up until this time, Tom Berenger (BIG CHILL) played good guys and Willem Dafoe (STREETS OF FIRE) played bad guys, but director Oliver Stone (BORN ON THE 4TH OF JULY) casted them against type as Sgt. Barnes and Sgt. Elias respectively. Barnes understands the brutality of combat and doesn’t try to bring conventional morality into madness, because he sees that as madness. Elias is a crusader who tries to retain his humanity by acknowledging the humanity of all people. The two characters are the yin and yang of the platoon and Chris flip flops from one viewpoint to the other depending on the crisis in front of him.

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