½ Knowing that the key elements in this film will consist of German teenager POWs being forced to clear landmines, the brutal consequences are inevitable and there can be no mystery about what awful scenes it must contain. Dsl 2640u Firmware Update. Its point is simple: this is no way to treat children regardless of how Hitler's Germany used them, or what they did in the war. It depicts the vengeful Allies as little better than the enemy, when they are subjecting the boys to inhuman labour, starvation, beatings and humiliation. Bridging the two worlds is the boys' commandant, a Danish sergeant who carries out his orders, but with degrees of compassion. The film begs the questions: what is the right punishment for an oppressor and how far down into the population should it have extended; at what point is following orders a defence to war crimes; how were these boys recruited or conscripted; what would these boys have become, if Nazi Germany had prevailed; what do they symbolise now. And, if the method of clearing the mines was the forced labour of the enemy, in the form of half-starved, sick, scared and degraded teenagers, what guarantee is there even now that the beaches and the other minefields of Europe are safe? The film's ending, while appropriate to the story, leaves the questions open.