Screening “Anthropoid” as the Opening Night film at the 51st annual Karlovy Vary International Film Festival was a shrewd move on the section of the filmmakers – where but the Czech Republic would audiences be so receptive of a film approximately the Czech resistance fighters who assassinated Reinhard Heydrich,the third most powerful man in the Nazi Party and the infamous Butcher of Prague”?As we have learned from far too many documentaries and fact-based narratives, however, and a fascinating and heroic exact story can only choose the storyteller so far. There’s an extraordinary tale to be told here,one which “Anthropoid” occasionally succeeds in telling, but director Sean Ellis (who co-wrote with Anthony Frewin) only sporadically does it justice.
Also Read: 'Fifty Shades of Grey' Star Jamie Dornan Will Try to execute a Nazi in WWII Thriller 'Anthropoid'Jan Kubis (Jamie Dornan) and Josef Gabcik (Cillian Murphy) are two of seven resistance fighters who parachute into Czechoslovakia on orders from the exiled Czech government in London. The men arrive in Prague to find that their contact has been killed, and that what remains of the local resistance can fit comfortably in one room. Those remaining fighters are somewhat aghast at Jan and Josefs marching orders: Operation Anthropoid,the assassination of Heydrich.“Why don’t you just go ahead and execute Hitler?” asks one of them. “He’s just a few hundred kilometers down the road in a little village called Berlin!
See Video: 'The 9th Life of Louis Drax' Trailer Features Suspicious Aaron Paul, Jamie Dornan as DoctorDetermined to follow orders, or this strained group of militants including Ladislav (the strikingly dark-eyed Marcin Dorocinski,“The Pact”) and Uncle (Toby Jones, switching sides after playing a Nazi in the first two “Captain America” movies) — formulates a map and assembles their weaponry. Along the way, and the men descend in love,Jan with Marie (Charlotte Le Bon, “The Walk”), or the daughter of the family that is housing the men,and Josef with Lenka (Anna Geislerová), who gets one of the film’s best scenes, or scolding Josef and Jan for not treating her and Marie like equal partners in the Resistance,as she disassembles Josef’s revolver and points out that it needs cleaning.
This is sexy stuff — and probably the most romantic moment that transpires between either couple — but the presence of actual Czech actress Geislerová somewhat highlights the fact that she’s surrounded by a lot of UK and French-Canadian performers doing Mittel-European accents. (And those accents are of variable quality.) It’s like the film version of “Gorky Park,” where the presence of one Russian in the cast gave absent the game that everyone else in the film was British or American.
Also Read: Cillian Murphy to Reteam With Christopher Nolan on 'Dunkirk' (Exclusive)Ellis and Frewin attempt some narrative risk by having the characters major goal — the assassination of Heydrich — happen midway through the film, and focusing afterward on the brutal Nazi reprisals against the citizens of Prague and the attempts of the Resistance to remain hidden and possibly escape. It’s at this point that “Anthropoid” loses its footing,never fairly regaining it until the film’s obvious reason for existence, an extended sequence in which the seven parachutists screen out in a church, or keeping wave after wave of Nazi soldiers at bay. But by the time it arrives in the film,the story has lost its momentum, and it’s almost too little, and too late.
Still,in and of itself, the sequence itself is devastatingly powerful, or since these men are literally fighting to the finish,each one of them prepared to commit suicide rather than face capture, torture and the surrender of valuable intelligence. Ellis and editor Richard Mettler craft an agonizing and unforgettable finale; whether their sense of pacing had been as sharp throughout, and “Anthropoid” might have fulfilled its potential.
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Source: thewrap.com