The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

A child’s-eye view of the Holocaust, this family film is likely to trigger big questions from younger viewers.

[Director] Mark Herman knows how to milk the melodrama from every scene, but viewers may feel a little icky about the experience.

We are left in no doubt about the brutality of what's going on there but it's almost entirely off-screen. Still, the film is terribly confronting.

The tropes of the heartwarming indie kids movie get thrown together with the tropes of the low-voltage, war-at-home war drama, and the result is muddled but undeniably affecting

In truth, the film is sure to stop the hearts of many who see it. There may indeed be hope in hell, but better to avoid hell altogether.

Because its gaze is so level and so unyielding, it stands as one of the better dramatic films made on this subject (although it's not nearly as fine as Louis Malle's Au Revoir les Enfants, in which the camps remain a distant abstraction).

[The film] touches on important questions about the costs of human life and the dangers of hatred in a stirring, heart-wrenching tale.

“The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” asks several powerful questions about war, family, and morality. It also gives us a glimpse into a part of our world’s history that is still hard to look at but should be reckoned with.

A valiant attempt to tell a small scale story about an unimaginably huge period in our history, and while it may drag in places, it has its heart in the right place and a devastating ending that will take your breath away.

At once painful, tear-jerking, and deeply emotional, this is a film that cannot be easily forgotten.