Such a frustrating disappointment

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

There are a couple of ways of looking at Eichmann's capture, conviction, and execution -- and they lead to different conclusions.Morally, of course, the guy was responsible for the brutalization and deaths of more than six million innocent people. "More" than six million because nobody really knows how many, and the homosexuals, mentally retarded, political undesirables, gypsies, and the rest are often forgotten. It was morally right for Eichmann to be hanged.Psychologically, I'm not so sure. We all need enemies. They serve as bad examples for the rest of us. They hold us together. When they've escaped justice, they animate our existence. We can see the dynamic at work today in America. The air is full of hatred. With the execution of Eichmann, part of our reason for being disappeared. It's like achieving any other grand goal to which you've dedicated years. What follows the initial celebration is an emotional let down. I wonder how many of us slumped when we learned that Josef Mengele was confirmed to have been long dead, deep down, underneath the gratitude paid to Fortune.Sociologically, the results are mixed. Religious offenses are carried across generations. Anyone of Jewish background is less likely to forgive and forget. Not a family went unscathed. Germany will always be the villain for all of us, although every German who participated in any way in the Nazi genocidal program is now dead. The Shi'ites and Sunni have been at each others' throats, on and off, for more than a thousand years.The film is told mostly from Eichmann's point of view when he was a captive being interrogated. A fine performance from Thomas Kretschmann, whether as the young SS officer or the self-justifying prisoner. And from Franke Potente as the interrogator's wife, Vera, although she's dubbed. Troy Garity, as Avner Less, the interrogator, is particularly weak. There are times when it seems that he's never acted before.The flashbacks begin when Eichmann is already a colonel in the SS, and he's a heartless and treacherous bastard. He may love his children -- it sounds like it -- but he's an adulterer and manipulator. In Budapest, he takes up with a succulent baroness, Tereza Srbová, with whom, under other circumstances, any normally depraved man would willingly take up.Some of it is literally hard to believe. The baroness gets Eichmann all hot and glandular by having him recite the number of Jews he's killed from different countries while sitting naked on his lap. Later, she brings him a cheerful baby in a basket, tells Eichmann that the baby's blood is tainted, and orders him to kill the baby on the spot. And don't worry. The flesh will be fed to the dogs and the tiny bones ground up for fertilizer. "I've always heard the cabbages from Budapest are the best." Eichmann hesitates, then shoots the babe with his pistol. Murdering the toddler, yes. He murdered a million toddlers. But shooting it in its cradle in front of his anti-Semitic girl friend? It's easier to believe that the Chief Interrogator drove a Volkswagon in 1963 Jerusalem, which he does.At least we're spared the horrors of the concentration camp films, and Eichmann isn't presented as a slavering monster. The narrative is really a duel between the solemn Jewish interrogator and the suave Eichmann. Most flashbacks are brief. We listen to a list of Eichmann's many sins and watch him smoothly deny them. "Die Wannseekonferenz" captures the younger Eichmann as little more than a secretary when the Nazis were trying to unravel the numerous knots of the "final solution." It's a more informative film than this because it tells us things we didn't already know.Or DO we know about Eichmann and the Nazi genocide? A survey of 1,000 secondary school pupils aged 11-16 revealed that 15% were not sure what Auschwitz was. 10% thought the infamous Nazi camp was a country bordering Germany and 2% thought it was a brand of beer. A further 2% identified Auschwitz as a religious festival, while a worrying 1% believed it was a type of bread. The poll also found that 60% did not know what the Final Solution was, with a 20% thinking it was the name given to the peace talks which ended the Second World War. (sky.com)

First, the good stuff:Thomas Kretschmann's work here is superb, truly superb, particularly in light of the fact that the film interrupts this superb acting with cutaways to various scenes while the voice of Kretschmann as Eichmann is heard writing letters to his children. I don't CARE. Give me more of Kretschmann being interrogated. He is riveting.Now, the bad stuff: The 'artistic license' this film takes is shameful in that it is an insult to every single jew who was murdered by the Nazi regime. There is no good reason for the filmmakers to have given Eichmann a Viennese Jew for a mistress. The notes of Eichmann's interrogator, Avner Less, do not mention anything about this, nor did it come up in Eichmann's Nuremberg trial-in-absentia or the Israeli trial. Nor was there a need to make Eichmann the lover of a Hungarian mistress who was so insatiable for the deaths of jews that she would reprimand him for not killing enough while they engaged in foreplay. This is obscene and it obscures the larger truth that seemingly inconsequential, everyday men can do terrible damage.To take these liberties is an attempt to obscure the monster that Eichmann really was. To remove the inexplicable terror that is the result of banal men doing unspeakable things in the name of ideology and / or the protection of a larger group of criminals, is misguided at best and an insult to every Jewish man, woman and child who walked into those building thinking they were going to get a shower. They should have stuck to the text of "The Eichmann Interrogation" and let the actors use their skills to produce the tension. That's what they are paid for, after all, and I would have liked to have seen more of the interaction between the two main characters. I give it a '4' on the strength of Thomas Kretschmann's acting alone. Otherwise this movie is a terrible waste of time.

The film begins with some introductory lines as , ¨Holocaust (1933-1945)¨ : Extermination of European Jews and others by the Nazi regime in Germany. The Nazi persecution reached its peak in the Final solution , a programme of mass extermination adopted in 1942 and carried out with murderous efficiency by Adolf Eichmann ¨. In addition, ¨Adolf Eichmann¨: German administrator, he was responsible for carrying out Hitler's Final solution and for administrating the concentration camps in which 6 million Jewish perished. After the war he went into hiding in Argentina and eluded the Nuremberg trials. World Encyclopedia , Oxford University Press.This is a historic drama with biographic elements dealing with Adolf Eichman and his interrogator officer Avner Less well performed by Thomas Kretschmann and Troy Garity, respectively. Furthermore, Stephen Fry as Jewish Minister and Franka Potente as affecting Avner's wife. The story is carried out by means of various flashbacks describing the cruel existence of Eichmannn. Atmospheric musical score by Richard Harvey and cold cinematography by Mike Connor. The motion picture is professionally by Robert Young.Adding more remarks along with the widely narrated on the movie referred to Adolf Eichmann, his life is the following : Eichmann (1906-62) was born in Austria. After starting as a lowly file clerk , he learned that there was an opening in Heinrich Himmler's SD, the information center for the Gestapo . Himmler, who believed that Eichmann could speak Hebrew, made him head of the Scientific Museum Jewish Affairs. In 1937 Eichmann paid a short visit to Palestine to get in touch with Arab leaders , but the was ordered out of the country by the British. On his return to Germany he was rapidly promoted. After service in the Reich Central Office of Jewish Emigration he was made chief of Subsection IV-B-4 of the RSHA, the Reich Central Security Office, as an expert on Jewish affairs. He was present at the Wansee Conference on January 20 , 1942, when it was decided to deport Jews to the extermination camps. In August 1944 Eichmann reported to Himmler that, although the death camps kept no exact statistics , 4 million Jews had died in them and that 2 million more had been shot or killed by mobile units. Arrested at the end of WWII, Eichmann escaped unrecognized from an internment camp in the American zone in 1946 and disappeared. On May 11, 1969, the Israeli secret service found him in Argentina and smuggling him back to Israel . His trial , which took place in Jerusalem from April 11 to August 14, 1961, aroused worldwide attention. He was charged with crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Found guilty, he was hanged at Ramle on May 31,1962.

There are a lot of things about "Eichmann" which seem curiously wrong. For one thing, this Eichmann is a lot more interesting and colourful than the real man appears to have been. There's a bizarre scene in which he is challenged by his very weird Hungarian mistress to shoot a baby; I won't give away whether or not he does so, but it's not something I've ever heard of before. This Eichmann is a womaniser, a bit of a boozer, altogether a more louche and raffish figure than the rather dull bureaucrat that I've always read Eichmann described as.Yes, the film suffers from some weird accents. Thomas Kretschmann, as Eichmann himself, speaks in a clipped German accent; Troy Garity, Franka Potente and Stephen Fry (in a bizarre but oddly convincing performance as, of all things, the Israeli Minister of Justice) all have indeterminately foreign accents, and none of it really makes sense.Having said that, Kretschmann carries off the job he has been asked to do, and Garity is really very good as Avner Less, who was not Eichmann's prosecutor (as someone else stated) but his interrogator. Less was not a lawyer but a police officer. The subplot of his wife being chronically ill is presumably there because it was true; it would have been better if they'd left it out, because what drama there is in this film is the battle of wills between Less the dogged interrogator and Eichmann the stolidly evasive interrogatee.I note in passing that Stephen Fry might almost be the rather more well-fed first cousin, or perhaps uncle, of Ciaran Hinds in "Munich". The accent is the same, and the tallness, slicked-down hair and intimidating bulk is very similar.If they'd toned down the lurid stuff about Eichmann's sex life and focused on what he actually did for a living, this could have been as good as "Conspiracy". Pity.