ANTHROPOID (15)
RESISTANCE fighters plot to kill a top Nazi in an enjoyably old-fashioned slice of Boy’s Own derring-do.
Based on a true story, it reveals the heroism and sacrifice of a brutalised population.
The assassins are Josef Gabcik (Cillian Murphy) and Jan Kubis (Jamie Dornan) who parachute into Czechoslovakia in 1941 to carry out Operation Anthropoid, namely the killing of Reinhard Heydrich, dubbed the Butcher of Prague.
As an architect of the “final solution” and anti-Jewish pogroms, he was the general even Adolf Hitler described as “the man with the iron heart”.
While Army Of Shadows (1969) remains the best movie dramatisation of the resistance, Anthropoid comes a very close second thanks to a plot that continually hammers home the terror and claustrophobia of living under a regime so focused on violence and murder.
The film’s well-judged use of drab colours and its grainy tone serve to heighten its sense of authenticity.
Perhaps best of all, it never shies away from the moral implications of the mission, which prompted violent reprisals involving the deaths of hundreds.
Not that Gabcik apparently felt any qualms, at one point remarking that the killing is not murder but an assassination: “Murder implies he has a life worth living.”