Z/Web

I wanted to like this but was a little worried going in because it felt too much like Oscar-bait — overly dramatic war film with an All-Star cast — but it turned out to be excellent. It’s not an action-type story, but more cerebral, and I loved that.

For example, a key part of the film is when the three spies hold the war-criminal prisoner while they wait for their government to figure out a way to smuggle him out of East Germany. That seems like a simple enough of a solution — except when you’re actually faced with the delicate realities of keeping a person captive for days on end, in secret, it becomes complicated. The prisoner must be watched by someone every second, and someone has to feed him and help with his bodily needs. Combined with that you have the conflicts of Stockholm syndrome (relating to the criminal) versus the horrible things he has done (a Nazi doctor who murdered and did fiendish medical experiments), and the psychological stress on the spies is tremendous. That was my favorite part of the film; I loved the way those complexities were presented.

My main criticism is that the film is very obvious in how it hides information from the viewer — it practically taunts us. For instance, it begins present day when we meet the three main characters as they are today. There’s plenty of hints about what happened to them forty years earlier when they undertook their secret mission, but the film cruelly shifts away just before revealing anything. Sometimes when that kind of thing happens the revealed secret is disappointing. In this case, it’s not… but it’s not exactly earth-shattering, either. (I actually liked the secret very much. It was extremely realistic and logical and elegantly simple.) My point is that the teasing and over-emphasis on the secret distorts the film in a gimmick twist-ending piece, and that’s not really what this is about.

The ending, or unfortunately endings, since this has several, is weak because it doesn’t know when to stop. It’s also a little far-fetched, though not so much it ruins the rest of the film. Mostly it just doesn’t live up to its own high standards and is too contrived.

The bottom line is I liked this. The performances, pacing, setting, and plot were all terrific. It’s not quite a five-star movie, though, because of few of those flaws are glaring, but it’s definitely worth seeing. I really liked it.