It is much better for a movie to have a bad beginning and a good ending than it is the inverse. A film that is good for most of its runtime only to fall apart in the last twenty minutes leaves its audience with a bad taste that ruins the entire experience and, in most cases makes it a legitimately "bad" movie. "Walking With the Enemy" doesn't fall into this trap. Unfortunately, it cannot simply be described as having a bed beginning followed by a good ending, either. While the ending is largely impressive and cinematic, both the beginning and middle of the film leave a lot to be desired. While the quality climax is enough (barely) to rescue the film from being flat out bad, it cannot fully redeem what is for most of its runtime a poorly made film.
Most of this film would have elicited eye-rolling even had it been a television movie, which is what it often felt like. From the very beginning I felt that there was something off about the camerawork. The cinematography was very stiff and seemed perfunctory--as if the cameras were set up merely to capture the action on screen with little thought given to the artistic composition of any shot. The film also featured frequent fades to black between scenes which, while expected in a television movie that needs to make room for commercials, felt very out of place in a movie theatre. There seemed to be an aversion to showing much of anything in the way of blood as well, which also made the film feel like an overly sanitized television production. I don't need excessive gore, but the film was too obvious in shying away from showing anything. Most times characters were shot, there was no blood at all. When there was, it was so minimal that it had the appearance of a dab of red paint applied with a brush (maybe it was). To be so timid is a disservice to the film's subject matter (it concerns Jews in Hungary trying to stay alive during WWII). There are a few scenes throughout the film that manage to be harrowing and raise the stake even without much blood, but they are the exception and are somewhat jarring compared to the soft tone the film frequently (inadvertently?) takes.
Near the very end, the film suddenly gets good. The climax consists of several scenes in and around a battle sequence that is actually well shot. I wonder if they blew the film's entire budget on these scenes and didn't have anything left to do anything of note with the rest of the film. Sadly, while a good sequence (especially when compared to the rest of the film), it is not nearly enough to make viewing the film worthwhile. It's like if someone recommended I watch a television show that was terrible for its first two seasons, then had a pretty good season three. If I'm going to sit through a lot of garbage, the payoff had better be extraordinary. That's not the case here.
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