Operation Finale
by Matthew Orton
Eight out
of 10
Operation Finale
could have been better, but it is a gripping, dramatic, watchable, compelling
motion picture.
It is based
on the true story of a Mossad operation that took Adolph Eichmann out of
Argentina, where he had found refuge and was already engaged in developing a
community of Nazis.
The murderer
is portrayed by Ben Kingsley, playing the opposite of the character that has
brought him the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role- Gandhi, the
epitome of peaceful and non –violent methods.
Adolph Eichmann
was the mastermind of the Final Solution and one of the most wanted of the
World War II criminals that has managed to escape and run to South America,
where he lived under a false name.
In Argentina,
he lives with his son, Klaus, and his wife, Vera, and he is celebrated by other
fascist escapees, entertaining with them dreams of bringing again to light the
vicious fascist ideas.
In the same
region in Argentina lives Lothar Hermann, aka Peter Strauss, with Sylvia
Hermann, a Jewish girl that was raised Catholic, who becomes close to Klaus and
invites him to her house.
Lothar Hermann
understands who the father of the boy is, informs the Jewish community and this
information is related to the Mossad headquarters in Israel, where it is however
considered that they need to concentrate their limited resources on the present
and not the past.
This is only
for a while and due in large part to doubts that the real Eichmann has been
found, the difficulty of getting him out if the information proves correct and
the calamity that would follow a botched attempt.
The logistics
of the operation is indeed more than a reason to ponder over the plan, at times
it seems impossible to pull off, given that army airplanes would be unable to
reach that far – although they did fly all the way to Entebbe, in another
awesome Israeli operation.
They would
need to use the services of the flag carrier, El Al, and use the celebrations
occasioned by a round figure of years since the Argentinean Independence, to elude
the authorities and take the war criminal out.
Peter Malkin
is the most important figure in the Mossad team, portrayed with brilliance by
the great Oscar Isaac, and he is in love with Hanna Elian – played by the
equally formidable Melanie Laurent – who is also part of the operation.
Indeed, it
looks like without Hanna Elian they would not get the approval, for she is the
expert that would give the fascist the correct dose of medication to keep him
drugged while they pass the customs, without killing him.
It is to be
a difficult task, the agent does not even want to participate initially, because
she had lost a detainee, because the dose is so hard to establish and in the
awful circumstances imposed by such abductions accidents can and do happen.
The team is
given a safe house in Argentina, they have cars to which they attach diplomatic
plates when necessary, support is offered by the Jewish community living there,
albeit some doubt if their allegiance is to Israel or Argentina.
Agents follow
the moves of the Nazi criminal, establish the plan of abducting him when he
returns from the Mercedes plant where he works, in a place where it is dark and
then embark him on the El Al flight that would take him out of the country.
After they
manage to get Eichmann, there are complications because the fascists quickly
realize what happened, but more importantly, El Al insists they want a signed
statement from the war criminal that shows he agrees to be on trial in Israel.
Adolph Eichmann
refuses to sign and even to admit that he is man they are looking for, and when
he confesses that he is the infamous architect of plan, he tries to use the
usual flimsy cover ups, he was just a clog in a machine, everyone, including
the Mossad agents, has to obey orders…
Peter Malkin
tries a new approach, giving the prisoner cigarettes, engaging in conversations
with him, in order to get him to sign the crucial document, without which the
whole mission would have failed.
There are
tensions over this tactic, other members of the team feeling that Malkin is going
too far, one would very much like to torture the monster and get him to sign
and if not just eliminate him pure and simple.
Peter Malkin
himself has a couple of scenes in which he seems very close to killing the
brute, for he remembers his sister and her children, who were killed by the
fascists, who have murdered six million Jews in the war.
Furthermore,
at a critical moment, the loathsome, disgusting Eichmann decides to talk about
his presence in the forest where the sister of Malkin was killed, the scene
where a multitude of innocents are lined in a trench and then shot, a young
woman holding her baby up, trying to give it to the monster, while a bullet
kills first the baby, then the mother and the Nazi official has to wipe the
brains off his clothes.
The tragedy
is immense, the film is notable, but there is something missing and the
insistence on the signed document seems exaggerated.