Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

as a soldier myself, in duty of the swiss army, the first thing that seemed strange to me was the inaccuracy of the soldiers behaviour. e.g. only one guy checks out the house and so on. but that concerns me with every war movie since my service :-)it's not really what bothers me the most. could it be, that such a high-rated movie could not afford actors who are actually capable of speaking German properly?? actually, they should all be real German actors. it seemed rather awkward to me, hearing those "German" soldiers speaking an odd dialect or even a broken version of German which i've never heard before. clearly, they're Americans trying to speak German. I'm aware that it may not be recognized by English people who watch it. however, it really started to annoy me and i'm sure i'm not the only one who feels that way.good story though.

For many years, I had heard this story, I mean, since I was a child. Who first told it to me, I don't remember. I had thought that it was one of those stories that had to be made up. Every now and then, I would hear it again. Kind of like just often enough to just not be allowed to forget it.This little German woman and her son are in a house in the mountains, and it's almost Christmas. The Americans find the house from one direction. The Germans find the house from the other direction. And they spend Christmas Day together.How this woman's strength of character and respect for the season come together in this little house, with this unlikely combination of people is amazing. Just thinking about this story has my eyes welling up! This is a movie that you will regret missing!!

I found this movie while flipping through the channels early one morning in December/2005. I had missed the first 10 minutes and just had to buy the DVD. Although it plays loosely with the facts, something the film industry has a hard time adhering to, it nevertheless is an wonderful movie made for TV for the Hallmark Channel.It is based on the short story "Truce in the Forrest" and "The Night God Came for Dinner" by Fritz Vicken. Unlike the movie, communication was done between Fritz's mother Elisabeth, who spoke some French and one of the American soldiers who also spoke a little French. Only one of the Germans spoke some English.Both the movie and real life incident showed that these people could put their differences aside and found they were much alike in many ways. Unlike the conflict between the Germans and Russians, there wasn't that level of hatred unless they were dealing with the SS. I've found many stories where soldiers put their differences aside to help each other out, from a German officer stopping an American jeep at a checkpoint that was carrying a wounded GI, then directing them to the American lines, to the pilot of an ME-109 who came upon a crippled B-17 and rather than shooting it out of the sky, escorted it to the English Channel and made sure it was going to make it safely back before peeling away. Ironically, the pilots of those 2 warplanes found each other in the later years and became close friends. That's what this movie does it to show the human side of our "enemy" and leaves you hoping they made it out of the war OK but it does leave you wondering what ever happened to them.Fritz Vicken was able to locate Sgt. Ralph Blank in a Maryland nursing home after years of searching for the soldiers, thanks to "Unsolved Mysteries". Sadly, Fritz Vicken died the year this movie was released. What is ironic is that Fritz immigrated to this country after the war, like so many German soldiers and civilians. Our former enemies were now productive Americans. Fritz owned a bakery in Honolulu for many years.I've added this movie to my Christmas holiday collection.

I came here for a review last night before deciding which TV movie to settle in front of, and those I found made this one look unmissable. How misled I feel!Firstly, it needs to be pointed out up front that this is very much a housewife's daytime movie. The performances are wooden, every sentence is an attempt at 'poignant' in the way that housewife's daytime movies and bad soap operas always are, and it is based in that predictable and well-trodden premise that men (particularly soldiers) are essentially violent and incompassionate. The whole movie is about the 'drama' apparent in the moments when the male characters threaten to develop a second dimension.If that sounds tolerable (or even enjoyable) to you, then be warned. Linda Hamilton's German accent, while quite good, is painfully distracting - as is her face, for some reason. The other performances are no doubt an enduring source of embarrassment to their perpetrators, with painfully thin and obvious characterizations being the order of the day. There are few surprises, but do watch for the 'Monty Pythonesque' endless supply of food and drink that miraculously appears from the hungry soldiers' knapsacks!I wasn't expecting action, but I had hoped for beautiful or textural or emotionally charged. What I got was a particularly bad Christmas 'feelgood' story that will have an intelligent audience cringing with the crapulence of it all.Watch it under the folowing circumstances: 1: There's nothing else on. 2: You are a fan of predictable 'housewife takes on men and wins' TV movies. 3: The only way you can appreciate a true story is when Hollywood turns it into a feature film. 4: You've imbibed enough nog that your emotions are easily stirred by unsophisticated storytelling.