A fascinating tale is undone by clichés
Snippet of history warrants more than a rehash of war-thriller banalities
Anthropoid follows the same road as most of the war movies that came before it, using the same formula despite trying to give a new angle to the perspective of the Allies in the Second World War. After watching the film, it becomes obvious that the entire genre could do with some upgrades.
Director Sean Ellis pins down typical themes of patriotic martyrdom and betrayal with ease, giving nothing short of what is expected from a modern-day twist on Europe in the 1940s. But that’s the problem.
Anthropoid follows Josef Gabcik (Cillian Murphy), and Jan Kubis (Jamie Dornan), Czech partisans airlifted from London to their Nazi-occupied native land. Their pivotal role in an English-led mission, Operation Anthropoid, is to assassinate SS Gen. Reinhard Heydrich, the main architect behind the Final Solution and Nazi Germany’s third in command after Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler.
This vital snippet of history warrants more than just a simple rehashing of the genre’s basic banalities. The film, co-written by Ellis and Anthony Frewin, begs audiences to care, implores them to invest themselves in the seldom-explored tale of the Czech resistance, but the triviality of the forced dramatics leaves the plot and characters suffering for a lack of anything beyond tropes.
The female roles offered limited moments of strength and intelligence, only providing the same sensual hiccups a Second World War thriller would need to counterbalance the suspense and violence. And there were plenty of missed opportunities to develop any eccentricity in characters Jan and Josef.
Relying on painfully functional war-thriller clichés — an abundance of hopeless romantics, hardened citizens-turned-soldiers and faceless German uniforms — no time was spent exploring the personal and psychological dilemmas of war. Traversing the unaddressed issues of the film, rather than assuming the go-tos of the genre, would have made the “send in the drones” type finale a little more bearable — and shorter. Instead, Ellis chose to put the audience through 30 minutes of German drones being ticked off like check marks on a “how to make a Second-World-War thriller” tipsheet.
Anthropoid fruitlessly re-establishes the morbidity of the Third Reich in awkwardly placed torture scenes where the focus should have centred on the true event’s natural tension. Heydrich’s assassination is a rarely told, yet crucial historical bookmark. It deserves more than what Hollywood’s overfamiliar production tricks could deliver.