MovieChat Forums > Escape from Sobibor (1987) Discussion > Realism - some nit picking comments

Realism - some nit picking comments

posted 13 years ago by m-h-w-bullen
14 replies | jump to latest

There's no question this is a good film but I have some nit picking comments!

Firstly I think some of the inmates are too beautiful and too many of the actors are familiar. It would have been better to have more ugliness and less well known actors (I appeciate that commercial considerations may be involved)!

Secondly the escape. I find it hard to believe that after a year or so on starvation diets that the inmates we see running out of the camp can do so like olympic athletes.

And, whilst I appreciate that things did not go to plan, why did they not stick to the plan of escaping out of the main gate, so avoiding the mine field and most of the guards. Is this artistic licence or was it really like that?

[–] movies789 11 years ago

I noticed two things in the film which may or may not have happened in real life:

1) The stolen rifles would have been very useful if deployed in an organized fashion against the guard-tower machine-gunners, as well as the last remaining guards firing their submachine guns from the fence-line, yet (with some exceptions), most of the rifles were simply carried off to the woods by prisoners running for their lives, rather than their stopping, aiming at & shooting the guards who were mowing them down.

2) Sasha and the other Russian soldiers appeared to (happen to?) hold back and allow the civilian prisoners to race out ahead of them, thus absorbing the brunt of the minefield explosions and machine-gun fire. Only after the minefield had been effectively cleared for them, and many of the guards had been neutralized, did the Russians venture out to bring up the rear.