Oscar Isaac compels in ‘Operation Finale’
After blasting Stormtroopers in the latest “Star Wars” episode, Oscar Isaac sets his sights on real-life villains as an Israeli Nazi hunter in “Operation Finale.”
And he checks off what has to be an item on many a serious actor’s bucket list: Sharing the soundstage with Sir Ben Kingsley, who gives a chillingly Zen performance as Adolf Eichmann, the man who made the trains run on time shipping 6 million Jews to Hitler’s ovens.
The acting is great, but screenwriter Matthew Orton’s attempts to give the film the philosophical heft that it deserve fall somewhat short.
It’s certainly a compelling true story. Among Hitler’s top lieutenants, only Eichmann escaped Germany before the Nuremberg trials. Tracked down in Argentina, he was spirited away in 1960 and stood trial the next year in Jerusalem. He was unrepentant to the end.
Taking a few liberties with the facts to amp up the drama, “Operation Finale” doesn’t quite reach “Argo” levels of tension
‘Operation Finale’
Chris Weitz. Oscar Isaac, Ben Kingsley. Bad
as spy movie, so director Chris Weitz keeps the focus on the smoldering performances of its two stars, Kingsley’s villain in a mask of thoughtfulness and propriety, and Isaac’s tortured Mossad agent (the real-life Peter Malkin). The two play a game of psychological cat and mouse that doesn’t always ring quite true but is still the most compelling aspect of the film, aside from the history itself.
For anyone interested in that history, there’s a 2015 German film, “The People vs. Fritz Bauer,” that tells the story of the German prosecutor who risked his career to tip off the Mossad that Eichmann was in Buenos Aires. It is the “Rogue One,” if you will, to “Operation Finale’s” “New Hope.”
Part of the problem with both historical films is that the indisputable evil of their villains makes the conflicts clear cut and morally unambiguous. That might be fine for a space opera, but it can dull the impact of the drama.
“Operation Finale” attempts to raise the stakes by giving Isaac’s character a troubling backstory and some maverick tendencies, but it just does pack the same punch of, say, Steven Spielberg’s similarly themed “Munich.”