Antropoid

  

Release Date: 09th September 2016

 

In ‘I942, Britain sends a group of British-trained Czech commandos to Prague to assassinate SS-
General Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Nazi security services.

 

  The Cathedral-set gun battle that rages during the climax to this WWII drama is one of the most authentic and nerve-jangling set-pieces of the year so far. It is also a potent conclusion to a powerful film in which Metro Manila director Sean Ellis casts Cillian Murphy and Jamie Dornan as Josef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš, who are sent from Britain — which hosts the Czechoslovakian government in exile — with orders to take out SS bigwig Reinhard Heydrich, the architect behind the Final Solution. This is Operation Anthropoid.

  The impressive cast recount this operational retelling with thick accents (which sound far more authentic than the vocal horror show of Child 44, it should be said) and the story builds slowly as the ear adjusts, tracking the heroes’ integration into the Czechoslovakian Resistance where suspicion reigns and every move is potentially fatal. Conflict is rife from the outset; some inside the movement are opposed to the plan, anxious about possible reprisals. Nazi rule has already proved ruthless. As Ellis demonstrates with brutal precision, these concerns are prescient. Several scenes in the final third will have audiences flinching.

 

  As with his previous film, Ellis (who takes a co-writing and the cinematography credit) opts for unfussy handheld photography, which lets the audience feel integrated into the mission. And, with a sharp eye for detail, he also charts the heroes’ emotional travails with both Gabčík and Kubiš striking up relationships with local girls, a move that brings added depth and poignancy as the women risk their lives to aid in the mission’s success. The conclusion is both exciting and heart-rending. The Nazi response is grim.

  A compelling and moving interpretation of a largely forgotten moment in European history.

  This is a taught, well-acted film whose subject, the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the ruthless SS general hand-picked by Hitler to put down resistance among the Czech population after the country's capitulation to Germany in 1939, presents both heroism and trepidation on the part of the two main Czech resistance fighters who parachuted onto their native country to carry out their assignment but ultimately never succumbing to gratuitous scenes of violence that could diminish the movie's subject. The film's focus on a family of resistance fighters who provide shelter and succor to the commandos leaves the viewer with the feeling that it is only a matter of time that their role becomes less and less tenable especially after the assassination of Heydrich. The film's brutal, apocalyptic ending inserts the viewer into a hell on earth which ironically plays out in a church. The secondary romantic interests of the two men never waver from the main plot and give the viewer an insight into the dangers and fears of German occupation as seen through the eyes of the women, who, like their male counterparts, never waver from their mission in liberating their country from oppression. The acting never slips into the maudlin or abject heroism of the two fighters whose fear of capture and certain death comes through realistically but never superseding the significance and dedication of their mission. I found the film to be an honest portrayal of ordinary people whose love of country and freedom never wavers in the face of those responsible for one of the darkest chapters in history. This is not the typical war movie that relies on gratuitous violence that sometimes takes away from the main theme, although there is a sufficient amount during the battle scenes at the film's conclusion, which highlights the ruthlessness of their German occupiers. It was the actions of those who risked everything, including their lives, which gives the film its power.