About as subtle as a hammer blow to the skull and marred by a heedless mixture of fact and fiction, Costa-Gavras's latest exercise in historical awareness-raising nevertheless dramatizes an important real-life story, revolving around the efforts of one conscience-stricken SS officer to alert the rest of the world to the horrors of the Holocaust. SS lieutenant Kurt Gerstein (Ulrich Tukur) is a well-regarded chemist, who's serving his country by developing ways of purifying the German army's water supply while overseeing the fumigation of camp barracks using a form of prussic acid known as Zyklon B. Sent to a concentration camp in Poland to supervise an suspiciously la...
Released:
2002
Rated:
R
Length:
130 mins