Review by filmtoaster

Operation Finale 2018

I mean, I'm a fan of historical films, big time, I think if you can accurately portray a point of history and grip me from start to finish, it's an out of this world film. Schindler's List, The Pianist, Defiance, Life is Beautiful; all Holocaust films that engaged me and never halted to a grinding slug. The characters are given enough stock and feel like real human beings. The story doesn't feel like a retelling of events for the sake of historical accuracy, but rather a complete narrative arc. In Life is Beautiful, the boy wins the tank and finds his mother. In Schindler's List, the war ends and Oskar sets free all the Jews he was harboring. Unfortunately, Operation Finale fails to reach a cinematic aesthetic, so it ends up feeling like made for television. Scenes kind of just happen for the sake of keeping events accurate, without much regard for asking, "You know, will this being entertaining for the audience?" Oscar Isaac is fine, I guess-- he kind of just says his lines. The only sequence the film got more engrossing is when he's acting opposite Kingsley. Adolf believes he should be able to tell his side of what happened during his time as head of the camps. Watching the two bounce back and forth perked me up a little bit, as I had started to fall asleep within the first twenty minutes; quite an accomplishment. They try to also "explore" the hive mind phenomenon that brought impressionable teenagers to the Nazi regime, but it's glossed over with no finishing arc, it could've been cut out of the movie. Watch Swing Kids if you're eager to see that on screen. The televisual cinematography leaves a lot to the imagination. They couldn't find any other creative ways to shoot these scenes? The framing is so flat and the editing is like an assembly line chop, you can count the cuts. Even during the alluring conversations with Isaac and Kingsley, the laborious presentation kept it back from being better. I don't remember any of the characters' names; just don't bother; the most average a film can get.

You have no interest in what I have to say. Unless it confirms what you think you already know.

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