Operation Finale
Directed by: Chris Weitz
Written by: Matthew Orton
Starring: Oscar Isaac, Ben Kingsley, Mélanie Laurent, Haley Lu Richardson, Nick Kroll, Lior Raz, Michael Aronov, Ohad Knoller, Greg Hill, Torben Liebrecht, Michael Benjamin Hernandez, Joe Alwyn, Greta Scacchi, Peter Strauss, Pêpê Rapazote, Simon Russell Beale, Rocío Muñoz, Rita Pauls
Biography/Drama/History - 122 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 29 Aug 2018
Written by: Matthew Orton
Starring: Oscar Isaac, Ben Kingsley, Mélanie Laurent, Haley Lu Richardson, Nick Kroll, Lior Raz, Michael Aronov, Ohad Knoller, Greg Hill, Torben Liebrecht, Michael Benjamin Hernandez, Joe Alwyn, Greta Scacchi, Peter Strauss, Pêpê Rapazote, Simon Russell Beale, Rocío Muñoz, Rita Pauls
Biography/Drama/History - 122 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 29 Aug 2018
Perhaps one of the most important decisions a director must make is choosing a tone for his or her film. It affects everything to come including how the audience is supposed to feel during the film and influence their reactions as they file out of the theater. In Operation Finale, Director Chris Weitz opts to stiff-arm the inherent tragedy in his story, which includes Holocaust mass murder scenes and even the murder of babies. These events happen just off screen; therefore, we only see the run-up to and the aftermath of violence, never the act. Weitz forces us to use our imaginations to fill in the blanks, most likely with images we bring with us into the theater. He didn’t have to film it this way; however, Weitz wants the mood to hover toward intrigue rather than despair. A story about Adolf Eichmann’s World War II atrocities can easily make the audience choke up and douse us in the heaviest of drama. Not so with Operation Finale. Weitz includes jokes and deliberate mood lighteners creating a precarious levity to avoid offering up a weeper.
It is neither right nor wrong to land a softer impact on the audience rather than a harsher gut punch. It’s all about whether or not it conveys the material and message the filmmaker wants to deliver to share his vision. Based on a true story most audiences are already familiar with, Weitz must focus on how the characters act against their instincts for revenge and fulfill their mission rather than a more chronological, fact-based timeline of first this happened, then this, and finally that. If we already know the ending, it is imperative for the middle to offer us something new. The one-on-one verbal cat and mouse game between Eichmann and our protagonist, Peter Malkin, functions as the film’s crux as the Israeli special operators attempt to convince Eichmann to sign a piece of paper saying he willingly agrees to a public trial in Israel for his crimes during World War II.
It is neither right nor wrong to land a softer impact on the audience rather than a harsher gut punch. It’s all about whether or not it conveys the material and message the filmmaker wants to deliver to share his vision. Based on a true story most audiences are already familiar with, Weitz must focus on how the characters act against their instincts for revenge and fulfill their mission rather than a more chronological, fact-based timeline of first this happened, then this, and finally that. If we already know the ending, it is imperative for the middle to offer us something new. The one-on-one verbal cat and mouse game between Eichmann and our protagonist, Peter Malkin, functions as the film’s crux as the Israeli special operators attempt to convince Eichmann to sign a piece of paper saying he willingly agrees to a public trial in Israel for his crimes during World War II.
Ben Kingsley (The Jungle Book) as Adolf Eichmann is a curious casting choice. Not only is the audience familiar with Kingsley playing Jews during the war, such as his Itzhak Stern in Schindler’s List and Otto Frank in The Diary of Anne Frank, he is also 20 years older than Eichmann was at the time. This may frustrate those Dragnet “Just the facts ma’am” movie-goers, but Kingsley convinces as a man both attempting to hide from his past and one who bristles with a prickly rage when he thinks of those traitors at Nuremberg or those who dare besmirch what the Reich was attempting to do back then. Weitz and screenwriter Matthew Orton never give Eichmann a truly revealing soliloquy, so we are unsure if Eichmann believed he was just following orders, was only a logistician chained to his desk, or would do it all over again in a heartbeat.
Yet, even though Operation Finale is the story of Eichmann’s capture and the obstacles encountered spiriting him back to Israel, Eichmann is a supporting role. The movie closely follows Peter (Oscar Isaac, Annihilation), his crew, and their moral and spiritual crises keeping a man alive who was so personally involved in the demise of their own families. Peter and the other mostly interchangeable operators each fight their own demons urging them to just dispatch the man who orchestrated the systematic execution of their loved ones. Peter frequently flashes back to horrific images of how he thinks his beloved sister and her three young children were murdered in a forest. Some of the group even plays a macabre game of how many family members they lost in the war, believing there could be a winner depending on who declares the highest number.
Sequences meant to thrill but feel as contrived as they probably are bookend the film. The term ‘Argo-lite’ popped up on most people’s lips outside the theater as Weitz ratchets up tension in a will they or won’t they escape, far too reminiscent of Ben Affleck’s Best Picture-winning escape from Iran story. The broader middle, which should be just as tense between Peter and Eichmann is more of a stunted start-stop in pacing. During a celebration pumping themselves up to fly to Argentina, the moment grinds to a sudden halt as Simon Russell Beale (The Death of Stalin) as Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion orates a moving speech, yet one which feels lesser considering it feels shoehorned into a different scene. The Peter versus Eichmann tête-á-tête becomes a familiar cycle of Peter pacing in frustration, some conversation to work on establishing rapport, and then more frustrated pacing.
The American accents flowing from Peter and the majority of his team will bother purists as will the choice to lighten the mood and inject some historically questionable chase scenes. I understand the fictional action and accents are the price of producing a story to appeal to the masses. However, the inclusion of a complicated love interest for Peter, the jokes which fall flat and feel out of place, and the patchy pacing makes me wonder if more obvious and straightforward story-telling methods, which would land harder, would also more effectively convey the power of what these agents, as representatives of the entire state of Israel, were attempting to pull off. As David Ben-Gurion says, "For the first time in history, the victims will judge their executioner."
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