We give it: 5/5 stars
Operation Finale, from Director Christopher Weitz, is a thrilling, two-hour mind game. The film follows the fledgling group of Mossad agents who set off on a seemingly impossible mission to capture Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann, who was hiding in Argentina in the 1960s, and to bring him to Israel for trial. Eichmann is played brilliantly by Sir Ben Kingsley. There are few actual action sequences in the film, but there are plenty of quietly compelling moments in the safe house where Eichmann is being held hostage that will get your heart racing.
When the Mossad team settles in Argentina, they study Eichmann's routine for days and plan the perfect moment to capture him - at night as he's walking home from the bus. They bring him to a safe house with little difficulty. There were no witnesses.
Then comes the hard part; they have Eichmann in their grasp, but now the team has to practice self-restraint. Each one of them has a reason to kill Eichmann, having lost loved ones in the Holocaust. Agent Peter Malkin, played by Star Wars star Oscar Isaac, slowly begins to befriend Eichmann, or at least he pretends to so his team can finally transfer the Nazi leader to Israel. The scenes between these two actors are chilling. In one hair-raising moment when Malkin is shaving Eichmann's face, Eichmann says he wouldn't know what he'd do if he lost his family. That gives Malkin pause - with the razor blade resting on Eichmann's throat. Malkin's sister was killed in the Holocaust. He is not exactly sure how, so throughout the film he visualizes different gruesome scenarios. You can imagine how hard it was for him to stop himself from slitting Eichmann's throat.
One reason Malkin was able to listen to his moral compass, Kingsley mused, was because of a change the producers made to one of the characters. The anesthesiologist who joined the mission to capture Eichmann was a man in real life, Dr. Yonah Elian, but in the film he is a female character, played by Mélanie Laurent. That change, Kingsley shared at a post-screening discussion, allowed Malkin to "examine his moral compass."
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In fact, all of the characters are "examining each other’s motives," the actor suggested. "They’re not just examining Adolf."
You'll notice that Eichmann is not portrayed as a monster villain in the film. Instead, he is shown as a father, a husband, a man with feelings. That was by design, Kingsley explained.
"We let Nazi Germany off the hook if we play Eichmann as a Marvel comic book monster villain," he said.
Because the agents resisted their desire for revenge, they were able to seek something even greater: justice. Bringing Eichmann to Israel for trial, allowing Holocaust survivors to tell their stories for the first time, was much more cathartic.
“Every single person said the trial helped them to move on and allowed them to grieve what happened to the Jewish people,” screenwriter Matthew Orton told Townhall at the D.C. premiere at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum last week.
Eichmann sat on the stand for 16 weeks and was eventually hanged for his crimes.
Nearly a full row of Holocaust survivors were at the D.C. screening. They stood and were recognized before the film began.
I know MGM studios didn't plan this, but what perfect timing considering the last Nazi living in America was just deported back to Germany.
Operation Finale is in theaters everywhere Aug. 29.
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