Dreadfully Boring

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

I was 21 when I first watched the movie, but I was infatuated like a teenager. I wished I were Basia and dreamt to meet a man like Wolodyjowski. To me, it is first of all a story about love between a strong and heroic man and a self-sacrificing and devoted women. Their happiness was not destined to last long, but such love makes life worth living, and the very fact of its being doomed imparts some majesty to it. And it was played so convincingly! I also like the patriotic idea dominating the film. I'm not a Pole, but no matter whether you are Pole, Russian or anyone else, pride for your Motherland and readiness to sacrifice your life for it is the right feeling to instill. And, certainly, it is just pleasant to watch beautiful women and handsome men dressed in beautiful clothes. The battle scenes, although lacking present-day special effects, are still really impressive. The massacre episode is gruesome but at the same time it is not too naturalistic.

Out of three films made by Mr. Hoffman (Potop, Ogniem i Mieczem, Pan Wolodyjowski) upon the trilogy of Henryk Sienkiewicz, this film is probably the weakest. Strange to notice that this book is the last in the trilogy but was filmed first, so Hoffman preserved this backward method to the end. I only wish he could make new versions of this and Potop films as well! Anyway, Pan Wolodyjowski is a fine portrayal of the 17th century Poland, its wars against Tatars and other nomadic armies. What makes this film so brilliant is the superb battle scene shooting, graphical yet not so unbearable violence and clear patriotic (some may call it nationalistic) sentiment towards Poland. As I wrote, this is not the best film in the series, but try to watch them all three and see how well Hoffman did his job.

"Pan Wolodyjowski" does not rank with some of the great film epics, such as "Lawerence of Arabia," but there is definitely much to impress the lover of historical films. This is especially true if, like me, you have grown tired of all the usual times and places that make it repeatedly into film and wish to discover a new realm of barbaric splendor and excitement. In the late-1600s, while colonists in America were struggling to defend their western frontier, there was another borderland - a "Wild East" if you will - between Europe and Asia. The frontier between the Ottoman Empire and Europe lay through Poland, Ukraine, and southeastern Europe, and each side was trying to invade the other's. This was a world of Tatars and Turks, Cossacks and Polish "winged hussars," scimitars and lances, fur caps and feathers everywhere.This film adaptation of the last of Henryk Sienkiewicz' historical trilogy is a bit dated in its looks - women with big hair and bangs, the colors a bit too bright - but with a cast of thousands the story the film tells is compelling and filled with enough pitched battles, chases, explosions, hair's-breadth escapes, love stories, strong male and female characters, rapes, murders, impalings and suicides to keep all but the most special-effects dazed teenager entertained. But more than that, this film is a gateway into forgotten realms. Can anyone watch this or the other two episodes in the trilogy ("The Deluge," and "With Fire and Sword") and ever listen to another "dumb Polack" joke again? I don't think so.

This movie was a big disappointment. In the first hour of the movie there is very little going on.There are couple of funny scenes between Wolodylowski and Zagloba in the beginning and then nothing worth watching happens. The movie has some action later on but hardly worth spending 2 hours to watch the whole thing.Lots of scenes are just there to fill the movie with nothing going on . Some of the fighting and fencing scenes are hardly believable. You never get involved in the movie and puzzled by some action that the lead Wolodyjowski does toward the end of the movie. There are couple of other movies that I have seen by this director and all of them are awful bores to watch. Roman Polanski should have directed a movie like this.