During the final moments of Quentin Tarantino’s revisionist World War II drama “Inglorious Basterds” (2009), Brad Pitt’s foul-mouthed, no-nonsense team leader of the eponymous nazi-killing squad Lieutenant Aldo Raine asks the ruthless High Ranking S.S. Officer Hans Landa whether, once the war is over and he is left free, he will take his military regalia off. Typically, Lt. Raine would not hesitate terminating Third Reich officials of any ranking, for their crimes warrant only one fate. In the exceptional case that he must leave a Nazi alive for whichever reason, he would only do so under a strict condition: to mark them for life by carving a swastika on the individual’s forehead, an identifier for all the world to see that they would never be able to erase or hide, much less take off.
It is in agonizing screams that an unforgettably devious Christoph Waltz in his Oscar-winning turn gets permanently scarred by the knife of Aldo ‘The Apache’. This was Tarantino’s wishful spin on history of course. In real life, Lt. Raine’s concerns proved to be all too accurate since, while some of Hitler’s elite henchmen, as well as multiple direct perpetrators and indirect enablers, were apprehended and judged in The Nuremberg Trials, others managed to get away, fleeing through escape routes towards South America, specifically countries that had political regimes in power during the post-war period which facilitated the entry of Nazis into their territories.
Such was the case of Adolf Eichmann, one of the main masterminds behind and enforcers of The Final Solution—a fancy name for the plan devised to eradicate Jews systematically across Europe—who found refuge in Argentina, where he started anew, as if nothing ever happened, under the guise of a false identity, Ricardo Klement, avoiding prosecution for more than a decade until his eventual capture in 1960. Chris Weitz’s spineless espionage thriller “Operation Finale” (2018) dramatizes with major Hollywood glossiness the undercover mission carried out by a group of Mossad agents that, at last, brought the infamous man to justice by having him face a public trial for his war crimes in Jerusalem, in doing so offering a sense of closure to one of the darkest periods in human history, the Holocaust.
The road towards that historical landmark was not smooth or even ethical—the agents had to kidnap Eichmann and smuggle him into a plane to get him out of the country, therefore violating several United Nations conventions, as was Argentina’s sovereignty—but there are instances when the end more than justifies the means.
This was one of those cases. While that is true for the riveting real-life story that inspired this lifeless detailing of events, the same cannot be said about the paint-by-numbers screen adaptation as penned by Matthew Orton, for it sticks far too closely to generic narrative beats used ad nauseum in other extremely similar movies that came before and after (think “Argo” and “The Red Sea Diving Resort”), depicting everything with such an underachieving oversimplification that dilutes the nuances of the manhunt in question and the parties involved in it. One of the key operatives was Peter Maklin, a man greatly haunted by the assassination of his beloved sister, Fruma, at the hands of the Nazis. Oscar Isaac brings a sense of weathered gravitas to a role that relies too heavily on his natural charisma instead of his dramatic chops.
The rest of the team assembled features all the cliched assortment of personalities we’ve come to expect, starting with the essential female love interest who heavily contrasts the protagonist’s defining traits, an unscathed Mélanie Laurent as Hanna, a medical doctor in charge of administering sedatives to Eichmann during his transportation; a goofy sidekick reserved solely for comedic relief, here in the form of Rafi played by Nick Kroll; the hot-headed man that questions everyone else’s methods, Greg Hill as Moshe; a novice easily rattled by the smallest of inconveniences, Torben Liebrecht as Yaakov; and a rational mind that steers the wheel and prevents the ship from sinking, Michael Aronov as Aharoni.
They are all recruited for their specific abilities and sent to Argentina after confirming the information provided by a blind man, Dachau survivor Kothar Hermann, who claimed the father of his daughter’s boyfriend was none other than the Architect of the Holocaust himself, a serviceable if glaringly miscast Ben Kingsley as Eichmann. Their mission, should they choose to accept it, is to abduct him without anyone noticing and get him on a direct flight to Jerusalem where he would answer for his wrongdoings. Each and every one of them has personal reasons to succeed in their task, and individual agendas that threaten to derail the mission from time to time, but the greater satisfaction of healing a nation’s grief instead of just their own makes them stick to the plan, even when things don’t work out as intended.
Upon arriving, they rent cars and a house. Once all settled, they get to work. Laying on the grass with Maklin as he closely observes Klement going about his daily routine to establish with exact precision the best moment and place to extract him is the closest we ever get to seeing an agent’s fieldwork since most of the spy work (the surveillance and gathering of information, the forging of documents, the recruitment of civilians, the covert communication) is frustratingly relegated to slick montage sequences that swiftly advance the story into its more serene, but equally dull, second half—a tête-à-tête between captor and prisoner that gives a false impression of changing power dynamics and mistakes its over explanatory duologue for stimulating cerebral exchanges.
The already high-risk mission is complicated even further when the motley crew is informed that their flight has been postponed, leaving them stranded in their safe house, but also that they need Eichmann to sign an official document stating he has handed himself voluntarily to the authorities. Additionally, Eichmann’s son, Klaus, alerts a family friend and prominent local political figure, Carlos Fuldner, who leverages his power to get help from local authorities in finding Klement. All the while, Isaac and Kingsley engage in spasmodic conversations, which should not occur in the first place for an agent with Maklin’s expertise should know better, but that also occasionally touch upon genuinely interesting ideas. However, the perfunctory writing never holds a full grasp on any of them, let alone fleshes them out, regardless of the actors’ thoughtful delivery.
None of these obstacles prevented the mission from being successful, as in 1961, televised for the whole world to see, Eichmann took the stand and had to listen to the harrowing accounts of survivors which provided a clear picture of the destruction, on a purely human level, caused by The Holocaust through its many figures responsible for it. The man’s defense was that his involvement in the war was purely bureaucratic, a mere cog in the machinery; a detachment that was famously discussed by Hannah Arendt. This brings me to the following pondering…
Filmmaking is a collaborative effort and every single division must work in tandem to achieve greatness. Unfortunately this movie—although solidly helmed by an assured if dour direction, carried by dutiful performances across the board, transportive through its convincing production design and marching to the beat of a solemn score provided by the great Alexandre Desplat—seems totally clueless of the screenplay’s many limitations, which begs the question: when the participants of a movie—be it in the artistic, technical or corporate levels—fail to see the failures of their project, and cannot critically examine or reflect on the quality of their work, does mediocrity become banal or is it just the new norm of the modern movie industry?
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