‘Operation Finale’ is a color-bynumbers post-WWII political thriller

kin, a Mossad agent tapped for the mission to Argentina to nab Eichmann (Ben Kingsley), a high-level Nazi bureaucrat who oversaw the transportation of millions of Jews to their deaths in concentration camps. Peter is tormented by surrealistic visions of his sister Fruma (Rita Pauls), who met her demise in a German forest with her three children at the hands of Nazi soldiers.

When Sylvia (Haley Lu Richardson), a young German woman in Buenos Aires, starts a relationship with Eichmann’s son, Klaus ( Joe Alwyn), word gets back to Mossad that the elusive officer has been liv- ing in the country under an assumed name, working at a Mercedes-Benz factory. The intelligence agency plans a mission that involves surveillance, kidnapping under the cover of night and smuggling Eichmann out of Argentina on an El Al fligh t,sedatedand disguised as a drunken pilot.

The story’s details are truly wild and unbelievable, but the plotting and characters feel rote. Perhaps that’s just overfamiliarity with the story. The second half, when Isaac and Kingsley face off in a war of philosophies, is when the film truly comes together.

Eichmann has long been seen as the face of the “banality of evil,” and Kingsley portrays him as a fastidious, meticulous man claiming he was just following orders. He was just trying to protect his country, the same thing Peter wants. But underneath the proper manners and moments when he declares himself simply a cog inamachine,there’ssomething simmering. That’s actually what Peter and Adolph have in common, a burning rage that threatens to boil over their controlled demeanors. What do the Israelis want: revenge or justice?