A tightly-wound thriller about 3 Israeli agents who re-live a mission 30 years ago where they captured The Surgeon of Birkenau, a mad Nazi doctor who performed human experiments at the German concentration camp.
The mission was in 1969, and the doctor is now working at a maternity clinic in Germany. The story unwinds in flashback, with the 3 agents hooking up in 1999 and having to recount the events.
The whole thing was marvelous - a great cast, great script, and great action (although I wouldn't say it's an action film).
The huge constraint put upon the film - and the only real negative in my view - was that none of the three main characters, maybe none of the four, if you count the doctor - looked anything like their former selves from 30 years earlier.
In real life, you can look at a photo of a group of people taken 30 years ago, and pick out the people you know from today. They will have aged of course, their hair will be grey now, their bodies heavier, their skin less perky, but you'll still recognize eyes, or lips, or a jaw. Something. But with Helen Mirren the older Jessica Chastain, Tom Wilkinson the older Sam Worthington, and Cieran Hinds the older Martin Csokas, there was not a shred of likeness. I found myself having to think of something else, rather than how much each of them had changed in the intervening years.
Annoying though that was, we still enjoyed the movie immensely.
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