The kind of big-theme fiction film that might expect to receive some brownie points in advance. Certainly Norman Jewison is that kind of filmmaker: In the Heat of the Night, F.I.S.T., And Justice for All, A Soldier's Story, Agnes of God, etc., etc. But the original novel by Brian Moore, originator also of such admirable adaptations as The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne and Cold Heaven, never lets its writer's abiding interest in moral and religious issues override his interest in narrative: in this case a tight-knit chase thriller, albeit with a more upbeat finish on screen than on the page, about a French collaborationist, in hiding for half a century with the aid of a secret sect of Catholics called the Chevaliers de Ste. Marie ("They're rather right-wing. They believe the Pope isn't a Catholic"), who is staying barely a step ahead of an apparent team of Zionist hit men and a reopened investigation by a French magistrate under the new Crimes Against Humanity law. The fugitive, far from pure evil, but far as well from banal evil, is not the most unsympathetic figure -- white-haired, weak-hearted, short-winded, genuinely devout in his fashion, thirsting for absolution, though ruthless and cunning in his will to survive. Michael Caine, equally pathetic and scary, is customarily excellent in the part (it sounds as though he has dubbed the voice of the younger actor who takes over the part in the crude black-and-white flashbacks to 1944), but the entire cast is top-drawer -- Tilda Swinton, Jeremy Northam, Charlotte Rampling, Ciarán Hinds, Frank Finley, John Neville, Alan Bates -- once you accept, or if you accept, the artifice of Britishers playing Frenchmen. (Even an untranslated Gallicism such as coup de grâce will be ignorantly pronounced coo-duh-grah.) The geography of the chase -- all across the South of France -- is most attractive, and the shadowy pattern of the fugitive's network of support -- a logical extension of the legacy of Pope Pius XII, and hence a fascinating appendix to Costa-Gavras's Amen -- has almost a masonic aura of mystery about it. The action may be slow-moving and small-scaled, but that only enhances the feeling of reality. And that, in turn, only enhances the feeling of suspense. (2003) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.