In 1940,[2] after the outbreak of the Second World War, life is hard in a small East European border town under Nazi occupation, as witnessed primarily by a Canadian-born[3] twelve-year-old boy, Jan (Jason Hopley).

Jan's character is tempered by these events like "the making of a fine sword"; the boy will become a man ready to "forge his future in a country without fear and hate.

"[11] The film is "unjustly underrated", and when compared with Spielberg's big-budget Empire of the Sun (1987), is arguably "more successful on an intimate, personal level in depicting a child's eye view of the horrors of war.

"[4] Terry Rowan calls Jason Hopely's novice performance "beautiful",[12] as does VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever, which assigns the film 2.5 stars.

[13] The Great Canadian Movie Guide, by sharp contrast, derides The War Boy as "choppy and confusingly disjointed", "with somewhat stilted performances and dialogue" and fails to develop most characters and scenes, or even the idea that the children were born in Canada.