The Grey Zone is a poetic and masterful Holocaust drama based on the true story of Jews who did the seemingly unthinkable by working for the Nazis inside concentration camps for a chance to receive better living conditions and the possibility of staying alive for a few extra months before being exterminated themselves. This is very grim stuff but also an extremely moving and thought-provoking look at what human beings in the most miserable of circumstances will do to stay alive, and how through it all they sustain their desire to ultimately fight back. Tim Blake Nelson - best known for playing comic yokels in O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Good Girl - wrote and directed the film based on his own play, and does a superb job in both categories. The offbeat casting of perennial goofball David Arquette in one of the leads pays off with a surprisingly restrained and moving performance, and the rest of the cast is full of top-notch actors including Steve Buscemi, Harvey Keitel, Mira Sorvino, Natasha Lyonne, Daniel Benzali, and Topsy-Turvy's remarkable Allan Corduner as a Jewish doctor who assists the infamous Dr. Mengele in his horrific 'experiments.' This is one of the few truly great films of 2002 and I hope it doesn't fly totally under the radar of the Academy come nomination time.