In 1967, Polish movie crew made an excellent film, Westerplatte, dedicated to first several days of September 1939's German attack on Polish peninsula, where a small but brave and crafty force of soldiers made their best to defend a small plot of land. The black and white film is a bit detached and withdrawn on purpose and it helps to build a certain menacing suspense. Heroism is shown here as a very usual, almost casual event, not a beautiful pose, but a gray, morbid bravery in face of imminent death. There are many simply soldiers and officers who do their duty and they defend the territory at their best, despite a sure feeling that many will fall. A sad, bitter and acid tale is very deep and real, slow camera work helps to show many faces of gruesome death. What makes this film not totally perfect is a certain lack of deeper character build-up, as well as some slightly hammy dialog that lose some of the sharpness. This is a very cool film that must be watched and be remembered as a good example of decent war cinema

For me it's the best Polish war movie. This true story about almost 200 hundred Polish soldiers became a legend in Poland. Westerplatte it's a peninsula near Gdansk and there first shots of II world war was fired. Proportion of Polish and German forces was 1:20 (one Polish soldier to 20 German). German used Cuirassier "Schleswig Holstein", other Ships, Dive Bombers to beat Polish soldiers who was supposed to defence by 12 hours. They defend 7 days. In this movie you'll see all this heroes and how was it in real. German thought that it will be easy job, but they don't knew that on the Westerplatte was hide 5 sentrys, outposts and Polish soldiers was the best in they speciality. Great cinematography, great acting. It's the great movie.

If you are familiar with the usual kind of movies that Netflix adds to its collection, you may understand my great surprise when a few days ago they added this Polish movie (and several other Polish movies) to their offerings. You don't often see movies made before 1980 on Netflix, especially those that are also foreign movies! When Netflix recommended this movie to me, I decided to give it a look, and I'm glad that I did. While not a masterpiece, this is a solid World War II effort giving its audience a good look at a crucial part of the war. You really get an idea of how things started and progressed, and the struggles the Polish forces were facing. The battle sequences, while not overly graphic, do have a lot of firepower and showcase the brutality of war. In case you are wondering, while the movie was made behind the Iron Curtain during the depths of the Cold War, there is no communist propaganda on display here - it feels instead a showcase of how things really were at the time. I admit that there isn't a huge amount of character development on display, and it might have been interesting had the movie taken the time to show what was going on in the German forces' minds during this battle. But for the most part, the movie works very well, and I highly recommend it. I hope that this movie (and the other Polish movies) on Netflix do well enough with consumers so that Netflix will be encouraged to pick up more older movies of all different genres from Poland and many other countries.