Parents' Guide to

Downfall

By Tracy Moore, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 17+

Provocative look at Hitler's last days is extremely violent.

Movie R 2005 155 minutes
Downfall Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Community Reviews

age 17+

Based on 5 parent reviews

age 18+

German WWII Movie is a Cinematic Masterpiece

Downfall (Der Untergang) is a German-language WWII movie about the final days of Hitler's "thousand year Reich". It remains one of the best (if not THE best) war movies I have seen to date. It is also one of the most historically accurate war movies, gathering from my own knowledge regarding 1945 Germany and the end of the Reich. It is an excellent film if looking to see how the end of the war was experienced by the Germans. There is a lot of bloody violence in this movie, including severed limbs, suicides, hanging, etc. Children are sentenced to death by their own parents. There's some nudity in this movie but from what I can recall it was of a non-sexual nature. I would not recommend children (especially under 17 or who are sensitive to blood) see this movie.

This title has:

Too much violence
Too much drinking/drugs/smoking
age 18+

Definitely 21+

Gratuitous female nudity and violence.

This title has:

Too much violence
Too much sex
Too much drinking/drugs/smoking

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (5):
Kids say (6):

DOWNFALL is a fascinating, complicated look at Hitler's last days that offers an atypical perspective for a story that feels otherwise well-documented. It's told from the vantage point of those in Hitler's inner circle in a panic to save themselves as the Russians close around them in Berlin. It goes one further by attempting to portray each of them as humans, with their own complicated loyalties and self-interest and reactions to this news. This, coupled with the brutally graphic wartime violence, makes for an unsettling watch that never lets up.

Worth noting: The violence here goes beyond just dark -- it is, at times, downright sickening, such as when Magda Goebbels coolly poisons her own children rather than have to live in a world without Hitler's National Socialism. And though it moves briskly, 155 minutes of such macabre meditations will take its toll on the most well-steeled viewer. Expect to be left with a palpable unease, and more questions than answers: Can we learn anything by pondering what sort of person Hitler might have been underneath the demonic caricatures we're used to? Is it possible to behave humanely within an evil regime? What makes some people so blindly loyal to such terrible figures? How could someone so terrible have such magnetism to those who knew him? Strictly for mature teens and up.

Movie Details

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