Deliver Us, Co-Starring Alexander Siddig

They are the ultimate Cain and Abel brothers. One will be the Messiah and the other will be the Anti-Christ. Of course, the big question is who will be whom? A lapsing priest will protect them both, believing (or at least hoping) all of God’s children are born innocent in Cru Ennis & Lee Roy Kunz’s Deliver Us, which releases this Friday in theaters and on-demand.

Father Fox is one of the Vatican’s most scholarly young priests, who also has an excellent record as an exorcist. However, he intends to renounce his vows, because he has fallen in love Laura “Kusic” (the press notes did not bother to supply her surname, but that is what it sounded like), an Estonian mining heiress, who is currently battling unfounded claims of water contamination. It seems the Devil very definitely works through environmental scare-mongering.

The Vatican browbeats Father Fox into accepting one last assignment. Supposedly, it will not be an exorcism, but rather a miracle vetting. Apparently, Sister Yulia is pregnant with twins, the immaculate way, of course. Learned Cardinal Russo, whose work Father Fox frequently cited in his own scholarship, has some theories as two who her unborn sons might be. Father Saul, from the ultra-righteous secret ecclesiastical society, Vox Dei, more-or-less confirms those theories when he attempts to abort both infants. However, the subsequent sacrilege Father Fox witnesses (whether real or a vision) makes him suspect Vox Dei hopes to subvert the Church rather than defend it.

With Kusic’s help, the Father and the Cardinal try to protect Sister Yulia and her babies, once they are delivered. Of course, “Father” Saul is hot on their trail—and the Anti-Christ is apparently trying to assist him. Meanwhile, a series of freakish environmental events seemingly herald the End of Days.

Deliver Us has some decent Catholic-themed demonic horror, which will strongly resonate with Catholic faithful who are frustrated with the state of the Church in Rome. Father Saul warns us the Anti-Christ will come when people feel furthest from the Church. Those are eerily frightening words, particularly coming at a time when the Pope has turned his back on faithful shepherds, like Cardinal Jospeh Zen of Hong Kong, cutting a deal with his oppressors, the CCP, which undermines the Church’s autonomy, instead—but perhaps I digress.

However, it often feels like Ennis, Kunz, and co-screenwriter Kane Kunz try to have things both ways to maximize the scares. Maybe one of the infants is not necessarily destined for evil, until they need him to start implanting temptations and Scanners-style pain in people’s heads. This film already has so many archetypal hooks—a little less would have ended up being a little more.

Regardless, Alexander Siddig is terrific as Cardinal Russo, both at his erudite start and his apocalyptic finish. He really is an under appreciated genre character actor (and occasional romantic leading man). Co-director Lee Roy Kunz has a Jared Leto thing going on as Father Fox that mostly works for the film. In fact, if you are a fan of Leto, it should be easy to pretend you are watching him.

Tanel Toom’s Last Sentinel

In lighthouse and deep-sea oil rig movies and series, like The Vanishing and The Rig, characters often feel like the rest of the world might have disappeared, leaving them stranded forever. For the rag-tag crew aboard this post-apocalyptic ocean fort, that is a very real possibility. Their relief is distressingly late and some of them are starting to act a little stir crazy in Tanel Toom’s Last Sentinel, which opens this Friday in theaters.

The seas have risen, but the two tiny surviving nations remain perpetually at war. It is just four of them manning this remote, seabound military outpost (modeled on WWII Britain’s Maunsell forts), but Sgt. Hendrichs will not let any of them slack off. Cpl. Cassidy tries to be an intermediary between him and the grunts, Sullivan and Baines, but it isn’t easy. Their relief is way, way overdue, but when a ship finally arrives, unannounced, it is a cause of concern rather than relief. In fact, Hendrichs almost uses the fort’s super weapon to blow them all up.

That would have been a mistake, but the empty vessel is still disconcerting. At least it isn’t full of rats, like in Three Skeleton Key. It also holds some supplies, as well as a good deal of mystery. Regardless, it is still a sea-worthy ship, but Hendrichs is not about to let the squad abandon their post.

The basic concept of this Waterworld-like world is familiar, but the execution of the Estonian Toom (an Oscar nominee for the short film, The Confession) is notably strong. The initial encounter with the derelict ship is surprisingly tense, as are several subsequent sequences. The isolated setting is definitely eerie and the spartan set design is highly effective. It all looks great, but unfortunately, some of screenwriter Malachi Smythe later plot points stretch credibility.

Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool

Generally, it is a bad idea to vacation in despotic, dystopian regimes, because of their disregard for civil liberties, but at least you can usually also count on them to be corrupt, as well. James Foster is about to discover how true that is. It is a hard, trippy lesson to learn in Brandon Croneberg’s Infinity Pool, which opens Friday in theaters.

Most synopses of Infinity Pool go something like: “a couple checks into a luxury resort and weird things happen.” That sounds like a feature-film addition to the budding “strange hotel” genre represented by The White Lotus and The Resort, but the mysterious stuff really isn’t due to the gated resort. The chaos all starts when Foster and his wife Em venture outside the hotel’s barbed wire fortifications, with Gabi and Alban, a couple who claim to know the fictional repressive island of La Tolqa well.

Unfortunately, their outing leads to a whole lot of trouble. Ironically, this further strains the Fosters’ already rocky marriage, pushing him towards the trouble-making Gabi. She knows how to stoke his ego, claiming to have read his poorly selling novel, while also stimulating his carnal desires.

The big Macguffin in Infinity Pool is pretty original and highly provocative. Frankly, it is revealed fairly early and offers grist for a good deal of speculation. However, it is also dressed up with a lot of lurid debauchery, which sometimes overwhelms the smart stuff (which is in there). Let’s put it this way: the audience sees way more of Foster’s fluids than we need to. If you don’t follow that, it is just as well for you. Eventually, the depravities undermine the narrative, which ends with a whimper rather than the clever summation the inventive premise deserves.

Argento at Lincoln Center: Dracula 3D

The Dracula story involved fangs, crosses, wooden stakes, and swarms of bats, so it provides plenty of stuff to jut out or fly into the camera. That all could make it appealing for 3D, but it was horror master Dario Argento who finally went there. The results are certainly mixed, but he still takes care of the essential vampire business in Dracula 3D, which screens as part of the ongoing Beware of Dario Argento retrospective at Film at Lincoln Center.

Tania agrees to meet her lover after dark, despite the town’s constant curfew. This is a mistake, but removing the cross her caddish lover gave her will be even costlier. Before you can say “prologue,” she has been bitten, killed, turned, exhumed, and living at Dracula Castle. Of course, that is where Jonathan Harker is headed. Instead of a real estate agent, he is now a librarian hired to catalog the Count’s holdings. Dracula actually wants that work done, so he halfway tries to protect him from the newly fierce Tania.

Harker’s fiancée Mina has followed after him. She will stay with her old friend Lucy Kisslinger, who is looking a little peaked herself. When she also “dies,” Mina turns to visiting scholar Abraham Van Helsing for help.

The screenplay credited to Argento and three other screenwriters could have been generated from of randomizer of old Hammer Dracula scripts, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. The Carpathian village feels artificial rather than lived-in, but somehow, cinematographer Luciano Tovoli makes it look like it radiates sinister energy. It also features some of the most impressively brutal killing scenes of any Dracula adaptation.

American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally

Among the two propaganda broadcasters referred to as “Axis Sally,” Rita Zucca maybe said worse things than Mildred Gillars, but she got off far easier. Those are the breaks for people who renounce their American citizenship and openly side with our enemies. Unlike Zucca, Gillars would face the music in an American court. That complex case unfolds in Michael Polish’s American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally, which releases tomorrow in theaters and on-demand.

When the American G.I’s arrived in Berlin, Gillars tried to disappear into the woodwork, but she was way to infamous.  For years, she had frustrated American listeners, who sat through her mocking songs and odes to German military superiority, hoping to hear reports of their captured loved ones. Her scripts were written by Goebbels himself, who insisted she deliver them word-for-word, or else.

Even though she had sworn allegiance to the National Socialist regime, the Federal government prosecuted her for treason in a civilian criminal court. Naturally, she will be represented by James Laughlin, whom Polish and co-screenwriters Vance Owens and Darryl Hicks present as the William Kunstler of the 1940s, except Laughlin seems pretty contemptuous of his own client. His new associate Billy Owen, a recently discharged GI, is more sympathetic—maybe even in ways that aren’t so professional.

Arguably, Gillars was twentysome years ahead of her time. Had she been broadcasting anti-American propaganda in the 1960s, she would have been the subject of glowing documentaries like FTA. Maybe she didn’t deserve a fate so much worse than Zucca’s—really, it might be more accurate to say Zucca deserved far worse than she got. Regardless, Polish and company are too partisan in the way they present Gillars. The witnesses they dramatize in the film never represent the damning testimony of former POWs like Michael Evaneck and Eugene McCarthy, which clearly implied she was more personally invested in her propaganda than the film suggests.

Transsiberian, Hitting Sundance Now

These days, traveling from China to Russia is like climbing out of the fire and into the frying pan. About ten years ago, it was considered the opposite. Regardless, most rational Americans would be leery of taking the Transsiberian from Beijing all the way across Siberia, but for some reason it sounds fun to a train nut like Roy Nusser and his wife Jessie is willing to humor him. Guess what? They encounter corruption and danger in Brad Anderson’s Transsiberian, which starts streaming tomorrow on Sundance Now.

A French businessman warns the naïve Nussers how crooked Chinese and Russian cops are, but they really aren’t listening. Instead, he is totally fascinated by the train and she is perversely interested in their romantic but slightly sketchy traveling companions, Spanish Carlos Ximenez and American Abby. She is both jealous and somewhat disdainful of their free-spirited lifestyle. However, when klutzy Roy is left behind during a layover, she is initially grateful when the more experienced travelers accompany her as she waits for her wayward husband at the next stop.

Unfortunately, when Ximenez shows his true criminal colors, it leads to all kinds of complications. Nusser would prefer to forget the whole incident, but she is alarmed to discover the backpacker stashed a shipment of drugs in her camera bag—and their new cabin mate is Ilya Grinko, a senior officer with the Russian DEA.

Anderson’s genre films are often all over the place and Transsiberian is no exception. Honestly, the first two acts are bizarrely slow and traveloguish. However, third act cat-and-mouse game, back aboard the train with Grinko is tense, nerve-jangling stuff. Not surprisingly, Sir Ben Kingsley is far and away the film’s MVP, portraying Grinko with chilling ruthlessness. (Arguably, it hardly matters whether he is crooked or not, since he is serving a rotten regime.) Thomas Kreschmann is almost unrecognizable, looking very Russian and very sinister as Grinko’s thuggish partner Kolzak.

The Windermere Children on PBS

These children were survivors by definition. They managed to endure the National Socialist concentration camps, but the trauma was far from over. Yet, a special temporary refuge thrown together in an English country estate near Lake Windermere helped them transition from Hell on Earth to (in most cases) post-War British society. The four fateful months they passed at the Calgarth Estate are dramatized in the BBC-movie The Windermere Children, directed by Michael Samuels, which airs this Sunday on PBS.

Oscar Friedmann, a Jewish émigré child psychologist, convinced philanthropist Leonard Montefiore to fund the transitional school, believing the shared experiences of the students would help them process their grief and assist their integration into life after the camps. However, they only have two concerns when they first arrive: food and word from the Red Cross regarding relatives (who had mostly likely been murdered).

Although Friedmann dearly wants to counsel his charges, they are reluctant to open up to him. They are even more standoffish with Marie Paneth, a pedagogically rigid art therapist who is completely unprepared to confront the horrors the Windermere Children experienced. At least Jock Lawrence gets some of the older lads playing a bit of football. In fact, he quickly realizes teen-aged Ben Helfgott is loaded with natural talent.

In terms of screen drama, Windermere is pretty conventional, but well-intentioned stuff. The children are troubled, but fundamentally decent. Still, it is an aspect of the Holocaust we have rarely seen on film. There have been a number of films documenting the horrors of the camps and some like Sophie’s Choice that address the continuing ramifications years after the fact, but we rarely see the immediate (or mere weeks later) aftermath.

Windermere also has the distinction of featuring Thomas Kretschmann as the Jewish Friedmann, after he has portrayed dozens of SS officers and Stasi agents (true to form, you can see him portraying a Nazi agent again in the upcoming Penny Dreadful: City of Angels). He is really quite good as the humanistic but world-weary analyst-educator.

Balloon: Escaping Socialism

Hot air rises, even back in the cold, dingy GDR. Unfortunately, the wind rarely blew in a northernly direction. That is one of the many reasons why escape using a hot air balloon was such a desperate and unlikely plan. Nevertheless, two families oppressed by the socialist state will risk everything trying to sail away to freedom in Michael Bully Herbig’s historically accurate Balloon, which opens this Friday in New York.

If this premise sounds familiar, it is because the Walt Disney company produced Night Crossing in 1982, based on the same historical episode. Directed by the Oscar-winning Delbert Mann, the previous film is quite under-appreciated, but this is definitely a story worth re-telling, especially by German filmmakers.

In 1979, Erich Honecker rules East Germany with an iron hand, at Moscow’s behest. Border guards have orders to shoot to kill anyone attempting to cross over to the west, because that is what defending socialism entails. The Strelzyk and Wetzel families are determined to escape the oppressive regime to give their children better lives, so they have been secretly stitching together a hot air balloon as a means of escape. Unfortunately, Gunter Wetzel, the engineer who designed the balloon has come to the conclusion it cannot support both families. Due to the Wetzels’ circumstances, they defer to the Strelzyks, whose flight falters heartbreakingly close to the border.

Unlike the Mann film, which build up the maiden flight, Herbig essentially starts with the initial failed escape attempt and then cranks up the tension as both families go back to the drawing board, mindful that the dreaded Stasi is closing in on them. Rather awkwardly, the Strelzyks live right across the street from the local Stasi section chief. At least, Baumann is a dim-witted blowhard. On the other hand, Lt. Col. Seidel, who is overseeing the investigation of the first balloon crash site and the resulting manhunt, happens to be a shrewd and ruthless predator.

Well-known for comedy in Germany, Herbig set out to make his equivalent of The Lives of Others with Balloon. That is a daunting film to invite comparisons to, but Herbig fares surprisingly well. While Balloon does not have the same tragic heft and inspirational uplift, it is a grittily realistic film that is also nerve-wrackingly tense.

Waiting for Anya

Writing holocaust-themed novels for the young adult market is a tricky proposition. Adapting them for the big screen is even trickier. Mark Herman’s The Boy in the Striped Pajamas did a better job of it than the 2008 film generally gets credit for, because it gets pretty darned honest and tragic down the stretch. The challenges are even more apparent for this big screen treatment set amid the picturesque Pyrenees, blessed with excellent grazing land for sheep and conveniently located a stone’s throw away from Spain. A teenaged shepherd does his best to aid and comfort a small group of hidden Jewish children in Ben Cookson’s adaptation of Michael “War Horse” Morpurgo’s YA novel, Waiting for Anya, which opens today in Brooklyn.

Jo is a better shepherd than a student, but he still flees in panic at the sight of a bear. He is a little defensive when he discovers a mysterious stranger witnessed the full incident, but he quickly understands the man has more to lose than he does. Benjamin is in fact a Jew who escaped the transports, who made his way to his widowed mother-in-law Horcada’s mountain farm, hoping his missing daughter Anya will also make her way to their agreed rendezvous point. The not-knowing is killing him, but he is still determined to help the half dozen or so children who have also found refuge with Horcada.

After meeting one of the little urchins, Jo agrees to shuttle supplies from town to Horcada’s remote farm house. However, he remains rather confused by the situation. The National Socialists stationed in town, with Vichy’s blessing, seem like agreeably rugged outdoorsy types to him, especially “The Corporal,” who seems to have misgivings over the way his colleagues have prosecuted the war. Grieving his daughter lost during an air raid, the NCO tries to take Jo under his wing. He also has unexpected affection for a developmentally challenged village boy, whose knack for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time will become a major source of tension throughout the film.

Waiting for Anya is a well-intentioned film, but everyone in it looks way too healthy, even the hidden children. Unlike the devastating confrontation with reality Striped Pajamas builds towards, Cookson manages to avoid any graphic depictions of atrocities. In fact, there is only one incident of violence for evil’s sake that viewers have already been primed to expect, with an annoying sense of tragic inevitability.

Stratton: Dominic Cooper in Her Majesty’s Naval Service

When Yanks think of Brits, we often form a mental picture of Benny Hill or Are You Being Served?, but some of the world’s fiercest warfighters are in the Queen’s service. Sometimes their own lingo doesn’t do them any PR favors. The Special Boat Service sounds pretty pedestrian, but they hang with the U.S. Navy SEALs any day. In fact, John Stratton is so frequently paired up with a SEAL colleague, he also becomes a friend. His death leaves the British commando seething for vengeance, but he will focus on foiling a catastrophic terrorist plot in Simon West’s Stratton (trailer here) which opens this Friday in Los Angeles.

Stratton and his soon-to-be late SEAL pal Marty Sturgess were supposed to swim in and out of an Iranian germ warfare facility, safely securing their double-secret super-strain, but the mission specs are wrong at nearly every juncture. It is like someone knew they were coming. That would be Grigory Barovsky, a rogue Russian, previously assumed dead. He massacred the Iranians and framed the Brits and Yanks. Stratton just barely escaped, but Sturgess is not so lucky.

Naturally, his next SEAL partner, Hank Monroe, happens to be an old friend of Sturgess and rather hot-headed in the way we Yanks get. However, Stratton can keep him focused on the immediate tasks, like recovering the ultra-lethal pathogen, ferreting out the traitor in MI6, and generally killing a bunch of terrorist scum.

Stratton is a highly appealing throwback to 1980s action movies, like The Delta Force, Navy SEALs, and Ffolkes, while also nicely representing the “Special Relationship” between the U.S. and UK with Stratton’s partnership with a Navy SEAL comrade. Dominic Cooper is impressively steely as Stratton. He definitely overshadows Austin Stowell’s Monroe, but the film is titled after his character, so what do you expect? Regardless, Stowell has a gee whiz earnestness that suits the film and character well enough. However, the best developed relationship and strongest chemistry is that shared by Cooper and Gemma Chan as the by-the-book mission controller, Aggy.

Admittedly, Thomas Kretschmann looks a little weary playing the villainous Barovsky, which is why the German reporter in A Taxi Driver was such a nice change of pace for him. Connie Nielsen and Derek Jacobi add some class to the joint as Stratton’s M-like boss Sumner and his Derek Jacobi-like dad Ross.

There are several neatly executed meat-and-potatoes action scenes and a number of Middle Eastern terrorists get their comeuppance in a manner worthy of 24. West is an action veteran, who clearly helms with a steady hand. There is nothing pretentious or sucker-punchy about the film, which is why it is such a breath of fresh air. Highly recommended for action fans, Stratton opens this Friday (1/5) in LA at the Arena CineLounge and also releases day-and-date on iTunes.

A Taxi Driver: Korea, May 1980

To this day, the Gwangju Uprising remains controversial in Korea. Partisans on either side still claim either the North Koreans or U.S. military intervened, despite a lack of evidence either party got involved. Reportedly, the ROK Army suffered its greatest casualties when they opened fire on each other, which is never an advisable tactic. However, they had no trouble shooting at unarmed civilians when German reporter Jürgen Hinzpeter started secretly filming the Uprising. His footage shocked the world, but it was even more traumatic for the cabbie who witnessed it unfold live in Jang Hoon’s A Taxi Driver (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Like many Koreans, the mystery cabbie calling himself “Kim Man-seob” believed the demonstrations were just a few self-indulgent college students. Frankly, he does not pay much attention to rumor or the media, so has no idea what he is getting into when he intercepts a pre-arranged 100,000 won fare to take Hinzpeter from Seoul to Gwangju and back. Much to his surprise, the military has barricaded all roads into town. Once they slip in, Kim will also be even more taken aback by the city’s war footing. He just wants to get paid and return to Seoul, but when he delivers a secondary fare to the hospital, the death and suffering he sees there will finally rouse his political conscience and sense of outrage.

As it turns out, Gwangju cabbies were highly activist, because Hwang Tae-sul and his colleagues give their Seoul counterpart quite a dressing down. Regardless, the taxicab setting is quite convenient for facilitating plenty of car chases and stunt driving. However, it is still quite a faithfully rendered period production, most definitely including the cars and the clothes, but also probably the music too (but we will defer to the judgement of K-pop experts on that point).

You have to give Korean cinema credit for hospitality when they cast western actors in major roles. While Chinese films pretty much only employ Yank and Brit expats as cartoon villains (hello, Wolf Warrior franchise), Korean films offer some highly sympathetic portrayals of historical figures. In this case, Thomas Kretschmann’s Hinzpeter is a figure audiences will personally root for even more than Liam Neeson’s Douglas MacArthur in the rip-roaring Operation Chromite and he covers a wider emotional range.

Of course, Song Kang-ho was born to play slightly problematic everymen, like Kim. His steadfast denial and constant bickering with Hinzpeter wears a little thin after the first act, but he really lowers the boom in his scenes of disillusionment with the government and subsequent embrace of democratic idealism. The ever-reliable Yoo Hai-jin is also likably salty but down to earth as Hwang.

This is a case where articles make a world of difference. Sharing absolutely no kinship with Travis Bickle, A Taxi Driver is very much in the same inspiring inspired-by-real-life-events bag that also spawned the Song Kang-ho vehicle, The Attorney. However, ATD has more action and intrigue and just generally happens to be more movie-like. Despite his occasional score-settling, Jang Hoon’s execution is tight, tense, and ultimately downright Capra-esque.  Recommended for fans of underdog historical dramas, A Taxi Driver opens today (8/11) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

Plastic: I’m Sorry Sir, Your Film Has Been Declined

Most of us are willing to risk facing death and dismemberment, but the prospect having our identity and credit cards stolen scares the willies out of us. Yet, that is exactly what this motley band of protagonists does. To be fair, some members of the crew are better than others in Julian Gilbey’s Plastic (trailer here), which opens this Friday.

Sam and his circle are some of the sort of disgustingly fortunate college students who always seem to have nice clothes and the latest tech toys. Somebody else always pays for them. How they stay in school is a bit of a mystery, but the source of their funds is not. He runs a small gang of credit card thieves. They are not run of the mill pickpockets. They understand how to steal passwords and build up customer profiles so their spending will not raise red flags. It was all working rather smoothly until Yatesy, the prettyboy jerkweed, and his sidekick Rafa rolled the wrong mark. In this case, wrong means the money man for a ruthless Euro gangster.

Before they know it, all four lads are face to face with the unamused Marcel, who offers them an ultimatum. They can pay him 50,000 pounds restitution every week, or a lump sum of two million. Sam opts for the one-shot deal. Initially, they plan to raise the funds doing what they do best, with the help of Sam’s class crush, Frankie. In addition to her supermodel looks, she also happens to work for a credit card company that done her wrong.

The idea of the fab five scrambling to drain the credit cards of three high rollers in Miami is rather subversively appealing, like a thriller version of Brewster’s Millions. Unfortunately, Yatesy the idiot blows the caper before it properly starts. Instead, the lads fall back on a half-baked jewel heist scheme that should be entirely outside their skill set. Pretending to be employees of an obscenely rich sultan, largely through the help spray-on tanners, Sam and company intend to steal a fabulous collection of colored diamonds from Steve Dawson, a Miami jeweler’s over-ambitious international sales manager.

Frankly, the second half stretches credibility to the breaking point, but at least Gilbey has the good sense to step on the gas and never look back. Pacing is not a problem here, but if you need vaguely likable characters in your thrillers, Plastic comes up empty. Arguably, Frankie is a reasonably decent person and at least Dawson’s hot assistant Beth has the good sense to question his sloppy security practices.

As Marcel and his creepy henchman Tariq, Thomas Krestchmann and Mem Ferda chew all the scenery that is not nailed down, which helps quite a bit. Graham McTavish and Malese Jow also bring some attitude and energy as the marks. For her part, Emma Rigby’s Frankie looks good in a swimsuit. However, all the lads are deadly dull, including Downton Abbey’s Ed Speleers (Jimmy Kent in seasons three through five) straining to be the roguish leading man.

Plastic has its guilty pleasures, but instead of embracing its grubby comparative advantages, it tries to become Raffles or Remington Steele midway through. It is all rather frustrating, because there are definitely B-movie elements that could have worked. Maybe worth a look later down the road, British thriller fans can safely wait for cable or Netflix. For diehard fans of the hip Brit TV cast, it launches on iTunes and opens in select markets this Friday (9/26).

Portrait of Evil: Eichmann

It was the final coda to Nuremberg. Fifteen years after the celebrated military tribunal, the State of Israel captured, tried, and ultimately executed Adolf Eichmann, often described as “the architect of the Holocaust.” Not surprisingly, Eichmann’s evilly banal presence in Israel stoked the emotions of the populace. Under orders to extract a quick and definitive confession, Captain Avner Less faces the challenge of a career in Robert Young’s Eichmann (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

A venal martinet, Eichmann was committed to the Fuhrer’s Final Solution, but cunning enough to keep his name off incriminating documents. Though thoroughly implicated at the Nuremberg Tribunal, Eichmann maintained his relative innocence, claiming to be a mere transportation officer. He simply made sure the trains ran on time. What they carried was someone else’s department, or so he claims. Yet, we see in flashbacks not just the extent of his knowledge of the Holocaust, but his often shocking acts of direct inhuman cruelty.

Based on the actual transcripts of Less’ interrogation, Young's Eichmann captures their verbal cat-and-mouse game quite effectively. It is also surprisingly forthright in its depiction of the Third Reich and its allies, including those in the Middle East. In particular, a critical turning point in the interrogation hinges on Eichmann’s relationship with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, arguably the highest ranking Muslim cleric of the day and a vocal ally of the National Socialists. Eichmann denies taking him on a tour of a concentration camp, but Less uncovers a paper trail of gifts the Mufti bestowed on the supposedly self-effacing officer of the Reich.

Given the obvious constraints of its interrogate-and-dissemble format, Eichmann is understandably a bit stagey. However, the way the film delves into the historical record is quite intelligent. A cinematic chess game, Eichmann is a film aimed at the head rather than the heart.

Indeed, this would be the trial that inspired Hannah Arendt’s famous phrase “the banality of evil,” so do not expect Thomas Kretschmann to menacingly chew the scenery as Eichmann. Yet, he is able to convey the animalistic intelligence lurking beneath his bland and unassuming exterior. It is a fascinating depiction of horrific figure. In one especially telling scene, two guards bring three plates of food into Eichmann’s holding cell. He is to pick one, allowing the guards to eat the other two, except they cannot, because he keeps switching the plates. Is it paranoia or deep-seated contempt for his Jewish jailors?

Young and screenwriter Snoo Wilson deftly walk a fine line, endowing Eichmann with human failings, without humanizing him, never inviting sympathy for the mass murder in any way. Unfortunately, Troy Garity (the son of the infamous Tom Hayden) is rather lifeless as Less, serving as a weak counterbalance to the coldly calculating Eichmann. Still, it is always entertaining to watch Stephen Fry playing smart, somewhat arrogant authority figures, in this case Less’ politically savvy superior Minister Tormer.

Despite its underwhelming protagonist, Eichmann deserves credit for its well thought-out cinematic representation of the National Socialist mass murderer. Again, Kretschmann’s work as the title personage is chillingly focused, but considering his previous Nazi portrayals in films like The Pianist, Downfall, and Valkyrie, he ought to start accepting lighter, more congenial parts for a change or risk becoming the next type-cast Maxmillian Schell (who was in fact an ardent Nazi foe, whose family had been forced to flee Germany in 1938). Definitely worth seeing, Eichmann opens this Friday (11/12) in New York at the Quad Cinema.