The Pitch:
It's like the movie Munich except earlier and in Argentina.
There's a kind of prestige movie that you sort of
know is never going to work. On paper, you describe the movie, and it sounds
like it should be in the thick of an awards season.
But, when someone actually writes a script for it,
casts the movie, and shoots it, it never actualizes as something awards worthy.
Let's try it:
- A period movie based on a popular book, written by an Oscar winner (Tom Stoppard), starring Oscar winners Alicia Vikander, Christoph Waltz, and Judi Dench, also featuring up-and-comers like Jack O'Connell, Dane Dehaan, Cara Delevingne. (Tulip Fever)
- A $90 million WWI epic starring Oscar winner Christian Bale, established leading man Oscar Isaac, and French up-and-comer Charlotte Le Bon, written and directed by the Oscar winning screenwriter of Hotel Rwanda. (The Promise).
- Bryan Singer and Christopher McQuarrie, the pair that teamed up to make The Usual Suspects a stealth Oscar success, reunite for a WWII movie starring Tom Cruise, as locked in as ever to finally get an Oscar, and a host of other highly respected actors including Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, and Tom Wilkinson. (Valkyrie)
- A story of Jewish survival during the Holocaust directed by Oscar sooth-sayer Edward Zwick, starring James Bond, a grown up Billy Elliot, and Liev Schriber. (Defiance)
- Oscar winner Christopher Plummer plays the deposed Kaiser of Germany during WWII, trying to come to terms with the fact that he no longer has power. Starring Jai Courtney, Lily James, and Oscar nominee Janey McTeer. (The Exception)
All of these examples have different levels of
realized Oscar buzz. I don't want to call these Oscar pretenders, because most
of them didn't even get that far. The best term I can come up with for them is
"Oscar knock offs". If you aren't looking that closely, they look
like the real thing, but it doesn't take much to notice they aren't genuine.
That name isn't entirely fair though. It implies an awards-chasing intent that
I don't think many of the movies really had. Maybe "prestige lite" is
a better term.
I think you see where I'm going with this. Operation
Finale checks a lot of awards-bait boxes. Nazis. Oscar winner chewing
scenery (Ben Kingsley). Lead actor who you assume already has an Oscar
nomination for something (Oscar Isaac). Nice period dressing in the production
and costume design. It's easy to envision the best version of this movie: sort
of Munich meets Argo through a Nazi lens. This could be an
excellently tense movie with characters racing a ticking clock and repeatedly
finding themselves in exposed situations. When done right, interrogation scenes
are riveting.
Operation Finale is maybe the 70% version of its best self. Oscar Isaac
is virtually incapable of being less than a sturdy lead. Ben Kingsley does have
a lot of fun playing up his role. Melanie Laurent is one of those actresses whose
name I immediately recognize, but I have to look up IMDB to figure out why.
She's the rare performer who is a name, not a face. Normally it's the other way
around. Haley Lu Richardson is welcome in any movie I see, although she doesn't
have much to do in this. Nick Kroll has secured an interesting niche for
himself. He is the go-to 1940's to 1960's Jewish man. I'm not sure how much use
there is to have that locked down, but if anyone needs a Jewish lawyer or
middle-manager in 1952, he's getting the first call.
A good marker of this "prestige lite"
movies is the tendency to find the Wikipedia pages for them more interesting
than the movie. Sure enough, I spent most of this movie with the Argentinian
Germans Wikipedia page pulled up. This makes sense too. "Prestige
Lite" movies often stem from someone identifying a fascinating point point
in history that has been under-covered in film. I guess that means the big test
for if a movie is awards-worthy or not is this: Is the movie more interesting
than its Wikipedia article? Operation Finale is not.
Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend
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