Orders From Above – Review
87 Minutes, Not rated
Written and Directed by Vir Srinivas
Synopsis:
Fifteen years after the end of World War II, Israeli police officer Avner Less interrogates Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Final Solution.
This was a pretty good set-up for a movie: a high-ranking Nazi (Adolf Eichmann) is brought back from Argentina to stand trial in Israel for his role in planning and executing the “Final Solution” to the “Jewish problem” during World War II.
You know? Those pesky concentration camps and gas chambers? That “solution.”
Well, he needed to be interrogated by the police before the trial, preferably with a confession, because the government needed the trail to look legitimate before they hung him.
So we get over an hour of a police officer listening to Eichmann ramble on about how he didn’t do anything, but that it was always his superiors, or the Hungarian government, or the Easter Bunny.
Trying so hard to make himself human, and in many ways, a victim himself.
Right? Except we’ve seen this scenario already, it was called Operation Finale and starred Oscar Isaac and Ben Kingsley but was between a Mossad agent and Eichmann just after he was captured.
I get that this is a true story. I get that Eichmann was an evil, manipulative piece of shit.
What I don’t get is why this movie needed to be made… again.
Anyway, as I said, this was a pretty good set-up, but despite trying to lend some gravitas to the proceedings by shooting in black and white, it’s just not that well done.
The performances are wooden, especially Eichmann, who oftentimes seemed to be reading off a script on the table, stumbling and bumbling about, not at all like the evil mastermind history knows him to be.
So, while I’d love to be able to whole-heartedly endorse Orders From Above, I can’t. I can tell you that if you want to hear a bunch of Nazi bureaucratic minutiae about train cars and schedules, then you might glean some additional value from this film.
And, frankly, given the state of the world, I should probably go ahead and recommend it anyway, just as a reminder of what evil looks like, sounds like, and can be made to appear as.
So, I will.
Orders From Above is now available on Digital platforms and stars Richard Cotter, Peter J. Donnelly, Darrell Hoffman, and Emmanuel Drakakis.
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