Jakob the Liar is an underrated movie.I just want to say that before anything else in my review.The movie tells about Jakob Heym, excellently played by Robin Williams.Jakob is a Jewish shop keeper living in Polish ghetto in 1944.He overhears a German radio broadcast about Russian troop movements.When he shares the information with a friend a rumor about a secret radio starts spreading in the ghetto.Jakob starts making up stories to the ghetto inhabitants he has heard from his 'secret radio'.This way he brings hope to the people who are losing it.Peter Kassovitz' Jakob the Liar (1999) hasn't got as much credit it would have deserved.It's a movie about an important matter.It combines comedy and tragedy in a great way.It has a brilliant cast.Robin Williams is just amazing.This actor, who turns 55 today (congratulations) has a great ability to act both comic and dramatic roles.He is a great man and a great actor.The young Hannah Taylor- Gordon is excellent playing Lina Kronstein, the Jewish girl Jakob is hiding.She was amazing also playing Anne Frank a couple years later.I hope we'll be hearing a lot from her in the future.Then there are also these greats; Bob Balaban (Kowalsky), Alan Arkin (Max Frankfurter), Michael Jeter (Avron), Liev Schreiber (Mischa the Prizefighter), director's son Mathieu Kassovitz (Herchel) and lots of others.This is a movie that can make you laugh and it is a movie that can make you cry.It shows all these poor people living under the horrors of war, under the circumstances you can not justify. Horrible things happened back then and now there are movies to show us it all.This is a movie about hope.Hope is still there in the dramatic ending.Hope is seen through the tears.Isn't that, hope, all we need in the end?