It's never a good sign for a movie when there's more emotional response being wrung out of animal deaths than human causalities and for Whale Rider director Niki Caro's adaptation of Diane Ackerman's bestselling book, it's even worse considering the subject material here is dealing with a heartbreaking World War 2 tale of unimaginable loss and torment during the Nazi occupied time in Poland of the 1940's.

The Zookeeper's Wife should be a film being talked about for end of year awards recognition but this pretty, yet unfortunately heartless drama fails to connect us properly to the plight of zoo managing couple Antonina and Jan Zabinski, who during the course of World War 2 risked their lives to save 100's of Jewish citizens escape the clutches of the invading German forces after their beloved zoo was bombed to pieces and taken over by Hitler's army in Warsaw.

It's a fascinating and seemingly not well-known true story that should be ripe for the big screen, much like classic World War 2 big screen pictures like The Pianist, Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas and even Schindler's List but Caro and her team fail to ever ignite the story of the Zabinski's to the levels it deserved.

Things start out promising enough as we're introduced to zoo life in peaceful Poland before war breaks out but Caro and her cast that's headlined by what could be normally ace actress Jessica Chastain's worst lead performance as the kind hearted Antonina and another terrible Daniel Bruhl turn as nefarious Nazi zoologist Lutz Heck (that seems to be his by now type casted role),can't make things work.

With Chastain's distracting Polish accent in the forefront, poorly established scenes of the Zabinski's and their interactions with their house guests and just a general sense that we're never getting the best out of what the story should be delivering, The Zookeeper's Wife ends up being an experience that leaves us feeling rather empty, even though we clearly understand that what was done was nothing short of heroic and heart-warming.

Final Say –

Bringing a worthy true story to the big screen, The Zookeeper's Wife is a polished production that has failed to bring the passion and heart the story deserved. With a misguided Chastain performance at the forefront and little support from the ensemble as a whole, Caro's film is a disappointment and one of the year's biggest wastes of potential.

2 food scrap bins out of 5

Antonina (Jessica Chastain) and Jan Zabinski run the Warsaw Zoo. She's a hands on zookeeper. When the war starts, the zoo is not spared. Nazi zoologist Lutz Heck convinces Antonina to transfer her prized animals to Berlin. The Zabinskis try to befriend Heck and convinces him to allow them to raise pigs in the zoo. This allows Jan access to the ghetto which he uses to save some 300 Jews right under Heck's nose.

This is a solid Holocaust drama. It's not new but still very much worth telling. There are some heart strings pulled. Sometimes like the little kids is too much. I would still make a couple of changes. The accented English needs to be reduced if not eliminated all together. It's just silly to have characters speak English but in an accent. Chastain is doing too much accent. Everybody should speak in a neutral manner. The second change is the title. It is bland and weak. They could call it a Human Zoo and that would be much better. I can overlook most of that and there is a compelling story underneath.

On the one hand we could call "The Zookeeper's Wife" another movie about the Nazis' actions. But I'd say that an important point that the movie makes is that everywhere in Europe there were people who stood up to the Third Reich. In this case, the protagonist is Antonina Żabiński, who with her husband Jan harbored a number of Jews during the Nazi occupation of Poland. The Nazis cleared the Warsaw Zoo of animals, and so the Żabińskis helped Jan's Jewish colleagues into the zoo, where the latter stayed during the occupation.

A similar movie that I saw was Agnieszka Holland's "In Darkness", about a sewer worker who used his knowledge of Warsaw's sewer system to help the Jews hide there. I guess that everywhere in Europe there were both collaborators and people who helped the Jews. Yad Vashem eventually recognized the Żabińskis as part of the Polish Righteous Among the Nations.

I recommend "The Zookeeper's Wife". It reminds us that there is good in us all. Jessica Chastain puts on one of the finest performances of her career.