Winter in Wartime

Resting somewhere between good-old-fashioned melodrama and hard-cut German sturm und drang is Winter in Wartime, a Dutch film about a boy who befriends an English pilot and keeps him safe from the Nazis in the winter of 1944-1945. It echoes a note that many World War II films have played before—the notion that one person standing up against the Germans is a heroic act. While such defiance was certainly heroic, the familiar aspects of Winter in Wartime overpower what is unique about the film (or what tries to be unique, anyway). It is a decent film with a decent heart and good leading performances, but the takeaway is nothing new.