Directed by Mark Herman
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(Starz)
A German officer of the SS moves his family from Berlin to the country. Eight-year-old Bruno, who has a love for adventure stories, finds a way outside his barricaded mansion and stumbles upon the "farm" next door. Sitting alone on the other side of an electric fence is Shmuel, a boy his age. They strike up a friendship, Bruno completely oblivious that Shmuel is actually in a Nazi concentration camp. Bruno begins to secretly bring him food. Shmuel gets a servant job in the mansion. His father decides to send the kids away, but Bruno wants to help Shmuel find his suddenly missing father so breaks in to the concentration camp. Mistaken for a Jew, Bruno is taken away with his friend in a cruelly ironic, devastating conclusion. The film's simple, and perhaps too predictable, story has a way of drawing in the viewer. The camp and the soldiers, even the father, are broad stereotypes of what you expect them to be. In its defense, the story is most interested in the child, Bruno, and his perspective, so maybe that was the intent.
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