Watch Harrison's Flowers For Free

i must have seen a different film!!

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

I hardly ever watch movies with ex-Yugoslavia war theme. I know they are always one-sided, and somehow I thought this one would be different. I was wrong.While it rather nicely portrays horrors of war, why does it have to be only one side in the war that does wrong, awful things. There are quite a lot of American movies showing Americans doing horrible things in wars, but when the Serbs are around, nobody else is bad. I'm far from saying Serbs did nothing wrong, but, has any of Hollywood filmmakers ever did any actual research before making a movie about war in ex-Yugoslavia?? There is a moment in this movie when Brody says something like "there are no good and bad guys here, they're all the same" and it gave me hope that I've actually chosen a decent movie. However, just a bit later I was proved wrong... Awful!

This movie must be seen as a love story more than anything else, and it works as a love story. However, to get an accurate picture of the war between Yugoslavia and Croatia, Harrison's Flowers is not suited. Those familiar with the history of the former Yugoslavia know that war crimes took place in and around Vukovar, and in 1991-92, Serbian nationalist paramilitaries of Arkan were responsible for heinous crimes. However, the movie is very one-sided, and Serbians are presented as half-drunk criminal villains while Croatians get the image of brave freedom fighters. In fact, the vast majority of movies portray Serbians as the villains, but I would claim that Croatians are maybe even more nationalistic than the Serbs. Those who watch the movie should know that Croatians were also responsible for killing civilians, especially during Operation Storm in 1995.I have gained operational experience myself as a war correspondent, and I know what is like to be under fire from mortars, artillery and snipers. Therefore I was very surprised to see how the reporters and photographers from the movie entered Vukovar wearing military camouflages trying to hide from snipers. I don't know any reporters who would do it like this because it makes you a legitimate target, and I doubt experienced reporters from Newsweek would do it like that. The goal of a journalist in a war area is to be seen. Yes, sometimes you have to avoid checkpoints to get to the other side, but to wear a military uniform is very, very stupid.Now it has been a couple of days since I wrote my review, and there was another thing that bothered me in this movie. Sarah lands in the city of Graz in Austria making her way all through Croatia to get to Vukovar. If she really wanted to save her husband, it would have been a lot easier to get to Belgrade. From Belgrade there is only a two-hour drive to Vukovar, and the city was controlled by the Serbs at this point. I just spoke to a friend of mine who was an officer in Vukovar, and he said it would have been no problem for the character in the movie to get to Vukovar. Even if there were some paramilitaries present, the Yugoslav army, JNA, was in control.For more about the Battle of Vukovar, Wikipedia has an interesting article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vukovar

If you are watching this movie to watch one or another of the cast members, or because you want to watch a war movie, or because you want to see the story of a woman tragically trying to rescue her husband, you'll have to change your expectations when watching this film: I know I had to. Andie MacDowell, David Strathairn, Brendan Gleeson, Adrien Brody, Elias Koteas, and all the rest of the cast, are marvelous, of course, and ultimately the way they threw themselves into their characters made the movie what it was--stunning."Harrison's Flowers" is not just a love story, a war movie, or a point-blank tragedy: neither is it simply an explanation of why photographers aren't as insane as we think. Certainly it contains elements of all those ideas. The incandescent relationship between Harrison and Sarah Lloyd is beautiful in its simplicity, though it is certainly not the main thrust behind the movie, as the title might suggest; war is obviously portrayed as bloody, destructive, and painful; the photographers/photojournalists focused on in the film are gorgeous characters, all with intense motivations and ideas. But "Harrison's Flowers" goes beyond any of that, becoming--I think--one of the best films ever made about a civilian's perspective towards war. Because it primarily concerns civilians, it doesn't follow along the lines of "Behind Enemy Lines" or "Saving Private Ryan" or even "The Thin Red Line", which all concern the soldier's perspectives: watching your comrades die, following orders or doing the right thing, living as a coward or dying heroically.... No. "Harrison's Flowers" has nothing to do with fighting for a cause, or with warrior-bonds between men, or even a statement against war. It is a beautiful, graphic, tragic explanation of why photographers and photojournalists do and should continue to do what they do: capture the world of war in Kodak, to remind us of it when it is gone, to remind us of destruction in times of peace, to remind us why war between men happens, to remind us of who really suffers during war--not just the soldiers, but the civilians, as well. The film's dedication (to the photographers and journalists who died in the former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1995) reveals this further. If you're anything like me, after seeing this film you'll feel motivated to better the world and reveal evil, not matter if it means starving, freezing with fear, being wounded, and perhaps even dying--like the very, very human photographers and journalists in this film do.

Many comments have already been made about this movie here, so I will try not to repeat what was already said. Therefore, I will only say this: If I had entered a room where this movie was playing and caught it in middle and if there were not a few well known Hollywood faces on it, I would have easily believed this was a (very good) documentary about the civil war in former Yugoslavia.I have never heard about this movie before - I suspect it didn't entered the Portuguese cinema circuit, and if it did, it passed unnoticed - and I bumped on it quite by chance at a store and bought it mostly because it was marked with an irresistible promotional price (about 3 euros) so it was worth it to take the risk. Well, I have to admit that while watching it, I become totally amazed by it's high quality! Very well directed, amazing shots - angles, sound and light just perfect - and a great realistic depiction of the human atrocities committed in this war.A must see movie for a lot of good reasons!