Operations Finale (2018) - Film Review

Operation Finale (2018)

PG-13 | 2h 2min | Biography , Drama , History | 29 August 2018 (USA) 

Director:

Chris Weitz

Writer:

Matthew Orton

Stars:

Oscar Isaac, Ben Kingsley, Mélanie Laurent

 

Fifteen years after the end of World War II, Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad and security agency Shin Bet — led by the tireless and heroic agent Peter Malkin (Isaac) — launched a daring top-secret raid to capture the notorious Eichmann (Kingsley), who had been reported dead in the chaos following Nazi Germany’s collapse but was, in fact, living and working in a suburb of Buenos Aires, Argentina under an assumed identity along with his wife and two sons. Monitoring his daily routine, Malkin and his operatives plot and execute the abduction under the cover of darkness just a few feet from Eichmann’s home. Determined to sneak him out of Argentina to stand trial in Israel, Malkin and Eichmann engage in an intense and gripping game of cat-and-mouse.

On the surface, Operation Finale is the type of mid-range adult drama everyone saying we’re not getting enough of these days- a movie that largely understands it’s not going to play when Oscar season comes but is committed to bringing its best to the table.

The film boasts slick direction from Chris Weitz, who does a yeoman’s job more often than not even though he doesn’t get mentioned alongside big-name directors very often.

However, Operation Finale is really a two-hander between its double above the title leads.  The thrill in this thriller doesn’t come from the capture or the other less than accurate embellishments that the film turns to late to jog the adrenaline, but rather these two sitting in a bare room and attempting to gain a mental edge on the other with the highest personal stakes imaginable in a contest that will ultimately do much to define the history of their respective peoples.  It’s worth the price of admission.

The film tries very hard but ultimately fails at getting inside the head of Eichmann, offering up two different narrative flourishes in an attempt to do so that don’t make a ton of sense in context.  The way the Nazi-hunters (fairly quickly) get him to drop his cover story and admit he’s Eichmann hinges on deliberately misstating his SS ID number continuously until he pridefully or anal-retentively corrects them.

More curiously, the setup for those Isaac/Kingsley 1:1s is an apparently fictional need to get Eichmann to sign a letter stating he’s voluntarily going to Israel to stand trial.  While it proves to be the key attraction of the movie, its denouement still doesn’t quite seem like something a canny bastard like Eichmann would have done.

The supporting cast gets pretty short shrift overall, with talented performers like Melanie Laurent not given much to do.  Weitz and screenwriter Matthew Orton also jazzed up history a bit to make things more exciting in other fairly obvious ways besides the aforementioned letter, particularly the climactic airport shenanigans that are actually rooted in truth but which are strangely made less believable by how they choose to present the cause of the delay.  Of course, Argo was my favorite movie of its year, so…

Operation Finale is a competently delivered historical drama that really comes to life when Oscar Isaac and Ben Kingsley go head to head with the mind games.