Mother Night

Keith Gordon's dry-eyed version of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s novel is less Vonnegutian than one might have hoped -- less absurd, less larky -- and less Vonnegutian than one might have feared: The wacky, philosophical story stands up perfectly well without the author's annoying verbal mannerisms. Howard W. Campbell Jr. (Nick Nolte) is an American writer recruited to spy on the Nazis and masquerade as a radio propagandist during World War II. Years later, he's recognized as a Nazi and beset by Nazi hunters, neo-fascists and Russian spies, eventually landing in the Israeli prison from which he tells his story. Was Campbell a working Nazi? What counted for more: his work as ...