Operation Finale Aims High, Misses the Mark

Operation Finale (2018) ★★½

 

Oscar Isaac, Ben Kingsley, Lior Raz, Mélanie Laurent, Nick Kroll, and Joe Alwyn; directed by Chris Weitz with a screenplay by Matthew Orton.

Operation Finale is based on the true story of Israeli Mossad and Shin Bet agents who, in 1960, tracked down and captured Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust and one of the world’s most wanted Nazi war criminals. It’s a story I have always thought would make a great movie, and director Chris Weitz (The Golden Compass) sets out to do just that, though the results are mixed at best.

Ben Kingsley as Adolf Eichmann in OPERATION FINALE.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

     The cast of Israelis, let by Oscar Isaac, is sufficient though not brilliant. Ben Kingsley, as the enigmatic Eichmann, is superb. What suffers here is the script, which not only takes some liberties with the facts, but fails to deliver the level of high-stakes drama found in films such as Steven Spielberg’s Munich or Ben Affleck’s Argo. The film’s sense of urgency—secret agents snatching then attempting to smuggle a Nazi war criminal out of Argentina on a commercial aircraft—seems manufactured at times, and never rises to the level to which it aspires. Chris Weitz’s direction is fine, but I lament the film was not in the hands of a more seasoned and accomplished director.
     There are a number of scenes set in the Argentine safe house that explore Eichmann’s humanity, and these are true to the persona presented by the real Eichmann—that of a family man, loyal to Germany, who was doing his job primarily from behind a desk, a soldier following orders. Kingsley, as the blind-folded captive, becomes increasingly sympathetic to the point where the humanization of such a monster becomes uncomfortable and even unseemly, given the true horror that this man unleashed in Europe in the 1940s. Ultimately, however, it is Isaac’s Peter Malkin, the Mossad agent who physically nabbed Eichmann, who demonstrates true humanity. 
     The clandestine capture and audacious delivery of Eichmann to Israel to stand trial for the deaths of millions of Jews is a story of historical importance that deserves to be told. This telling, however, aims high but manages to miss its mark, even if by a few inches.