When he isn’t pimping Winston Wolf out to Direct Line, it’s disheartening to see a great actor like Harvey Keitel in the Werther’s Original role here: the white-haired “Papi” narrating to his grandson how things were in the bad old dog days of the second world war. The framing device, whatever the commercial reasons, also has the unfortunate effect of sapping a degree of urgency from this ponderous and unfocused 1944-set tale.
Hungarian Jewish lawyer Sonson (Luke Mably) is already in a forced labour camp when his wife’s sudden death from breast cancer pushes him into actively resisting the Nazis. He’s lit by love’s undying flame, walks to Poland in a third of the time it would take a lesser man, and selflessly spearheads an uprising; Sonson wears his heroic credentials as starched as the SS regalia he disguises himself in.
But director Jasmin Dizdar and writer Gabriel de Mercur never scratch beneath to find the compelling psychological intricacies that were surely flushed out in such desperate pockets of combat; without them, Mably remains a terse but undeniably charismatic outer shell. Having everyone speak Bohemian or Teuton-scented English is an authenticity fail, too.
