The closing months of World War II provide an exciting backdrop for a boy’s adventure in Hol land’s “Winter in Wartime.”
Michiel (first-timer Martijn Lakemeier) is a 13-year-old boy disgusted by the conciliatory actions of his father, the mayor of a Dutch village who maintains a polite relationship with German occupiers in January 1945. The arrival of the boy’s dashing uncle, a Resistance fighter who has a pistol in his luggage, makes the lad eager to get involved in the Resistance himself — but both his father and his uncle forbid him from taking action.
Nevertheless, Michiel secretly accepts a mission to pass a letter to a blacksmith, and soon finds himself dodging Germans while aiding an RAF pilot wounded in a crash-landing. The pilot, and possibly anyone who helps him, is sure to face execution if found because he shot a German soldier who tried to arrest him.
Though the plot (supposedly based on a true story) strains credulity in places and the movie doesn’t really have much to say about moral conflicts and hidden identities, it plausibly places the boy at the center of a rousing thriller. “Winter in Wartime” may serve as a useful way to introduce teens to what World War II in Europe was like.