The title of Tim Blake Nelson's harrowing drama of Jewish death camp prisoners who rise up against their captors to "destroy the machinery" refers as much to the compromise and cloudy morality of collaboration as to the gray world coated in the smoke and ash of the crematoriums. Inspired by real-life events at the Auschwitz death camp, The Grey Zone stars David Arquette as a soul-deadened laborer whose being fiercely jolts to life when he finds a young girl alive among the gassed corpses. He's the heart and soul of an outstanding cast that includes Steve Buscemi and Daniel Benzali as revolt leaders, Allan Corduner as the shunned camp doctor, and Harvey Keitel as the commandant. Nelson's rapid pacing, intimate shooting, and terse, jagged dialogue give the moral debate a discomforting immediacy as it races a deadline. When doom hangs in the air, sure death creates unique priorities. --Sean Axmaker
(15 votes)
2.
Writer-director-actor Tim Blake Nelson presents THE GREY ZONE, a relentlessly bleak drama that uses one of history’s most incomprehensible calamities to address the ultimate question of human survival. Based in large part on Miklos Nyiszli's book, AUSCHWITZ: A DOCTOR'S EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT, THE GREY ZONE is set in the nightmarish world of Auschwitz in the 1940s. The film tells the brutal tale of the twelfth Sonderkommando unit, Jewish prisoners who were granted a few extra months of life in return for their services in helping with the genocide of their people. While organizing a revolt against the Nazis, a group of Sonderkommandos (played with ferocious intensity by David Arquette, Daniel Benzali, David Chandler, and Steve Buscemi) discover a young girl who has somehow managed to survive the gas chamber. Risking their lives, they team up with a fellow Jew, Doctor Nyiszli (Allan Corduner), to revive the fragile youngster and redeem themselves in the process. Nelson's excruciating drama is all the more unsettling for its unflinching honesty. By placing his characters in a world suffused with death, he creates an unbearable scenario where every decision determines the fate of dozens, if not hundreds, of innocent lives. THE GREY ZONE also features deeply impassioned performances by Harvey Keitel, Mira Sorvino, and Natasha Lyonne.
(15 votes)
3.
While the world was fighting... a secret battle was about to erupt.
Based on the real-life events and featuring a first-rate ensemble cast, this compelling and harrowing film chronicles a unit of Auschwitz's Sonderkommando, a special squad of Jewish prisoners, who staged the only armed revolt that would ever take place at Auschwitz.
(15 votes)
Mooviees.com is not the official site for this film.
All editorial views and opinions expressed here are for entertainment purposes only.
Movie Database
In Theaters
