This is not a comment to the movie itself. The bits I have seen show at least an accurate portrayal of rural Greece in the late 40's along with the political "turmoil" of the time. Acting was above average in general, although some members of the cast, notably Malkovich, could have done a slightly better job.So, is this propaganda? Of course it is BUT with more grains of truth than your average propaganda film, especially an American made. Yes, Mr Gatzoyannis (unless he is ashamed to use his real family name and resorts to "Gage") had lost his mother during the civil war. He is supposed to be one-sided, who wouldn't? He wrote a book about it, good for him. Someone made a film based on it, good for them. And now, many of us are bickering about what it is, propaganda or not, who are the good and who are the bad ones and so on...A commentator before said that war is the end of civilization. True! A civil war though makes an "ordinary" war look quite civilized and "noble". Americans surely have their experience, they have gone through a terrible civil war. We, Greeks, have our experience which, sadly, is more "fresh" - lots of people that lived through it are still around to talk about it. Kids being taken from their mothers' arms to be transported..where? Brother killing brother (literally!) and generally bringing down whatever was once dear. Who's the bad guy? Which brother gets moral high ground? The one who took to mountains, kidnapped young ones to put them through a grim life behind the Iron Curtain, laid waste to his land and his home? Or the other, who after suffering all that, imprisoned those left behind (the majority of which were not part of the armed struggle and suffered along too), exiled them to desolate barren islands (there are more than we need of those in the Aegean), made them "dance" with cats in a sack (interesting how democracy, or "democracy", can be as horrendous as communism or any other totalitarian regime) and generally held them at the "border" of society until 1974. Who gets praise and who gets blame? You don't know? I think you do! History was always written by victors, this is no exception. What is an exception in this case is that this particular "victor" (Gage) abstained his country's drama until it "suited" him to be a part of it. Having lost a loved one, a parent, in war is no unique to him, millions of people did! Did he live the ongoing "plague" that the civil war was? From the comfort of his house, half a world away. It is almost as if I, who have never been to the US, write a book about the drama of the Indians. Whatever moral high ground he possessed he lessened being that "distanced" from the whole scenery of it and its consequences. In short, this book and film portray HIS side, not his ideology's side but his personal side. It is easy to place blame, very hard to do so for one side only! I will not go into the politics of that period, that is for another place and another time. Decent film, worth a viewing if not for anything else for an accurate portrayal of the "scenery". No stars awarded as I have not seen it all, just bits and pieces.

Great movie, with a good performance from Kate Nelligan. Cant believe all the people defending communist kidnappers and murderers, after all the years of Nazi murders, people actually defend thugs kidnapping children, murdering villagers who refused to agree with them, etc, etc, etc.... The Greek Civil War was nothing more than Stalin trying to add Greece to his list of appetizers along with Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, etc... Stealing children to take behind the iron curtain, executing parents who try to keep their own children, stealing houses, livestock and food crops to feed the murderers of their own people is not a good thing and this movie sends that message in spades. People are supposed to be happy about being out from under the fascist murderers and put under the domination of communist ones???????

This film seems to have unjustly attracted a lot of nonsensical comments, mostly from left of center commentators; and it's sadly revealing how the facts cited by other viewers are not even addressed, but simply ignored by the left-ist commentators. Those who accuse the film of being anti-communist propaganda mostly use ad hominem arguments, and insult and invective. But ask yourself: what good is a political view which assumes itself (because it is self-described as "revolutionary") to be above ordinary moral or political criticism? If that were true, then there could never be any way to judge the value of the actions performed in its name. In short, this is a reasonably good film, with a fine performance by Kate Nelligan, and much less good work by other members of the cast. The direction is not inspired, and the flashback structure of the film seeks to maximize the emotional effects without stopping to consider just how powerful those effects are all by themselves, that is, the use of that structure betrays the fear of the film-makers that the story might not have the impact they wanted it to have. The original book is stronger, but it too is flawed by Nicholas Gage's failure to ask himself about how it was that the communists picked on his mother, even though he presents some of the evidence that answers the question. It's clear from the book that some members of his family -- I think his grandfather, but it's been a long time since I read the book -- had serious disputes with other people in the village in the 20s and 30s and perhaps even earlier, and that there may even have been a murder involved; naturally, Gage is not all that clear on the point. The communists, men, most of them, couldn't go after the grandfather, so, brave souls that they were, went after the most vulnerable: the Gage womenfolk. Despicable, but that is often the tenor of village and peasant life. And to me, this was the message of the book, that the politics of revolution were, in many cases, simply another weapon in the never-ending village war between its own members. The problem with the film is that it never really clarifies this central aspect of the drama, and so the power of Nelligan's performance is marooned. It affects, but it's almost in a vacuum, and Malkovich's portrayal of Gage, which I thought quite good, is similarly detached; but the flaw lay in the original book, which ducks important questions because Gage, North American that he is, simply doesn't understand the deeper currents of village life. Worth a look, no matter its flaws. No work of art is ever perfect, and this one gets high marks for trying.

The movie really belongs to the trash bin-same as the book. Good old American propaganda. As for those who are not Greeks but know exactly what happened in that war I really doubt that they do. The term "fascist" is commonly used in Greece for all right-wing people, even "mild" right-wing people, if such a thing exists. Does that ring any bells to you? It is really worth spending some time studying about the civil war in Greece(1945-1949). It really is the epitomy of US (and British) involvement in the internal affairs of every country and if you change the names and dates it can be just as good for Spain, Korea, El salvador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Cuba, Vietnam, Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq etc etc (the list is infinite) The epitomy of foreign US policy itself!Being evil is easy. Being good is tough. Choose your path or be a zero!