Netflix Review – Operation Finale (2018)
With money apparently no object for Netflix when it comes to film making, it’s following in its own tradition by chucking dollars at its latest offering, Operation Finale. One look at the cast tells you that, yet again, it’s aiming high. Oscar Isaac and Ben Kingsley at the top with supporting turns from the likes of Nick Kroll, Joe Alwyn, Greta Scaachi, Peter Strauss and a cameo from Simon Russell Beale. But is it money well spent?
Based on a true, and familiar, story, it relates how Israel’s secret service, Mossad, brought Adolf Eichmann to justice in the early 1960s. Known as the “architect of the final solution” and responsible for planning the extermination of some six million Jews in Europe, Eichmann was believed dead at the end of World War II. But he was discovered living in Argentina under an assumed name, so a group of agents were sent in to kidnap him and bring him back to be put on trial for his crimes. Capturing him was just the start: getting him out of Argentina proved to be an even bigger challenge.
Rooted in fact, this is a film where we inevitably know the ending – everything is tied up neatly at the end, just to be on the safe side – so the challenge for director Chris Weitz and writer Matthew Orton is to create tension and suspense. What they’ve made is a movie very much of two halves, the first concentrating on Eichmann’s discovery and the run-up to his capture, the second narrowing things down to his captivity and how he was eventually smuggled out of Argentina. And, even if a true story can be something of a dramatic disadvantage, what they’ve started out with is a narrative that arrives laden with potential for a nerve tingler.
If only the film was as well. It lingers far too long over the preparation phase, even though it’s clearly trying to fill in historical gaps for the audience. Once Eichmann has been kidnapped, his departure for Israel is delayed by the capture of another high profile war criminal, Josef Mengele, which produces more impatience on the part of the audience than suspense. Thankfully, it’s at this stage that the film’s two lead performers, Ben Kingsley and Oscar Isaac, really come into their own and, while their scenes together aren’t necessarily nail biting, there’s a fascination that goes with their attempts at mutual psychological manipulation.
Isaac plays real-life agent Peter Malkin. Something of an impetuous liability, as we learn early on, he’s also haunted by the loss of his older sister at the hands of the Nazis during the War (a laboured point during the film) but he turns out to be a worthy adversary for Eichmann, as played by Kingsley. With his rigid, military bearing and coldly calculating claims that his job was mere “paperwork” and his war was “a numerical one”, his Eichmann is fascinating yet loathsome, momentarily pathetic and always, but always, convinced that he was – and is – in the right.
For a film that could have bristled with tension and danger from the get-go, Operation Finale isn’t just surprisingly and disappointingly low-key, it’s downright slow at times. The fact that the Israeli agents were risking their lives and facing terrible odds never really hits the target. Isaac and Kingsley provide all the power, with the other characters essentially fading into a background blur, and the result is a film that, while respectful, doesn’t live up to its subject matter.
Freda Cooper | ★★1/2
Drama, History | UK, 3 October (2018) | Netflix | Dir. Chris Weitz | Oscar Isaac, Ben Kingsley, Nick Kroll, Joe Alwyn, Greta Scaachi, Peter Strauss, Simon Russell Beale.
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