fpanosyan
I didn't have high expectation from this movie. I have watched several documentaries and movies about the assassination of Heydrich. So I knew of all the details. My review is from that perspective. I really didn't want to see another movie about the assassination details...how many times can you see a movie about the same thing? ....I was pleasantly surprised, when at the beginning of the movie, it was about Heydrich the man, something I knew very little about...his journey to becoming a mass murderer. Jason Clarke did a wonderful job portraying Heydrich. You could see the evil in his cold eyes....but half way through the movie, it shifted back to a movie about the assassination and the Czech resistance. So no different than any other movie about the assassination...I wish they kept the assassination story out of the movie; it would have been much more powerful in my opinion. The way they started the movie was excellent and that should have been enough of a background to the rest of the movie about Heydrich the man. I also thought Rosamund Pike's role was completely unnecessary to the story. They could have made the movie without her as far as I'm concerned. They really don't need to have a female lead character in EVERY movie...that is a lazy approach and formula.
jonmainwaring
I was looking forward to this movie, having already seen both Anthropoid and (a long time ago) Operation Daybreak and with the knowledge that a contemporary of mine from my old university college had co-written the script. However, this movie didn't really know what it wanted to be: a study of the motivations that made Reinhard Heydrich the monster he was?; an account of the plotting and execution of his assassination?; or his role in masterminding the Final Solution?It's a shame because the latter two things have already been well covered in movies and TV plays. Operation Daybreak and Anthropoid are essentially the same movie, although Anthropoid's casting of Cillian Murphy was a mistake because he is so distractingly good looking (I'd shag him and I'm not even gay!) that you are sitting there thinking "This really hot guy is supposed to be on an undercover mission? Maybe in a Bond movie!" So we already know enough about the daring mission and the reprisals. And then there was a very good account of the process of the Wannsee Conference that was done for the telly (with Kenneth Branagh playing Heydrich this time); this show prompted me to visit Haus am Wannsee on my last visit to Berlin, which was a very moving experience for me.But the real opportunity here was to really get under Heydrich's skin and find out what made him tick. Some of what made him tick was alluded to in the first part of the movie but because of the restrictions of the two-hour length and the decision to, effectively, make this two movies in one we don't really get many answers. OK, we kind of get his wife sort of got him involved in the Nazi thing, but how did he get to be so powerful? I'm not buying that it was just because he could see how to run a chicken farm better than Himmler. More important, how did he become so brutal and unfeeling? These questions aren't really answered.So, it's a missed opportunity because it tries to cover too much in too little time. Maybe the director and writers ought to have taken a look at the TV miniseries about Albert Speer from the early 1980s that starred Rutger Hauer. There was another opportunist (although, rather strangely, one whom history seems to have been kinder to even though he was responsible for working people to death in munitions factories) and you get some idea why he became so attracted to Hitler, how he was able to turn a blind eye given his ambition and how he was clever enough to avoid getting the hanging after the war he so obviously deserved.For me, the most interesting thing about the Nazi era isn't the crazy mofos like Hitler, Himmler and the rest, but the enablers: the opportunists who are more concerned with personal ambition and who see their chances and take them, even if it means a lot of suffering for others. I find them interesting because there are more of these types around than perhaps we'd like to admit! And my view is that Heydrich was really one of these: in it for himself rather than some grand purpose!
jabol-19828
Great movie, not only for people who likes history but also for audience who don't interest about that period. First half is some kind of biography and the second half tell us more about Czech soldiers. I think that everyone should see that movie because is shows us that the best scenario writes our life and tell us more about people who live during WW2 and what pushed them to the action which is describe in Kryptonim HHhH
