This 1985 Soviet anti-war drama is one of the best movies ever made.

| Apr 17, 2024

The movie is terrible and pitiable. Klimov manages, as I say, to convey the authentic relentlessness of nightmare.

| Mar 15, 2023

Come and See is as harrowing and horrifying a war film as I've ever seen. It may well be a masterpiece, in fact.

| Mar 14, 2023

Rare is the film that successfully blends intoxicating visual images with unrelentingly grim material, but Russian director Elem Klimov's phenomenal Come and See is such a movie.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 14, 2023

The movie is a succession of brutally sincere "art" assaults, jammed together like the poorly articulated cars of an old freight train.

| Mar 14, 2023

This is filmmaking of enormous power and feeling even if the film's length mitigates against it.

| Mar 14, 2023

The power of Come and See principally derives from the inspired performance by Kravchenko as Florya, in what must be the ultimate loss-of-innocence role.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 14, 2023

A compelling, harrowing, absurdly beautiful account of the little known holocaust in Byelorussia.

| Mar 14, 2023

Very few war movies from any country -- including our own -- pummel our insides like Come and See.

| Mar 14, 2023

Director Elem Klimov keeps the human drama of the ordeal in sharp, clear focus at all times, while still giving the story the sweep of an epic unfolding -- an impressive balancing act.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 14, 2023

It's apocalypse caught in the act, a spellbinding, dangerous "excursion into hell."

| Mar 14, 2023

There's passion and exuberance in Klimov's work, but the essential crudity of his sensibility undermines it. At times, especially when the camera angles veer into grotesquerie, it suggests a Soviet Ken Russell movie.

| Mar 14, 2023

An overwhelming statement on the horrors of war, Come and See takes an unusual tack in relating a story of World War II. This is a psychological drama -- a harrowing, grueling journey into a young boy's mind as he tries to survive a very real nightmare.

| Mar 14, 2023

It has a raw, primitive force that makes you realize how much of our own horror of the last war has been diminished by Hollywood heroics or simply box-office co-existence with the enemy.

| Mar 14, 2023

These hysterical histrionics would put me off in any circumstances, but especially when emphasizing horror that speaks for itself.

| Mar 14, 2023

The film is a sustained act of looking, with a minimum of dramatic or character development, and these are sights that leave an indelible impression as strong or stronger than any antiwar film in memory.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 14, 2023

Come and See is a stirring, unremittingly powerful war drama that has the rare double virtue of constantly engaging both the eye and the emotions.

| Mar 14, 2023

142 minutes of lushly photographed Nazi obscenities. While the movie is technically excellent, and the director's point is well made, Come and See takes way too long a look.

| Mar 14, 2023

By telling the story from a child’s perspective, Klimov gives the horrors of war a new kind of immediacy. Not one born from stern men turned tragically hollow, but from a pure spirit prematurely drained of their innocence.

| Original Score: A | Mar 14, 2023

Klimov’s dramatic vitality, his control of shifting tones, and his mastery of surprise are what galvanize Come and See. Terrifying as this movie is, we always want to know what happens next.

| Mar 14, 2023