Dreadful. Producer Dan Friedkin makes a sorry directing debut on this fact-inspired post-WWII tale of Vermeers, art forgery and Nazi collaborators in Holland. Here, the accused wartime profiteer is art dealer/master forger Han Van Meegeren, a painter with a grudge against the art critics and authenticators who stopped his career back in the day. He claims the Vermeer he sold to Hermann Göring for a fabulous sum was his own work, and who could object to a Dutchman pulling a fast one on the Nazi elite? Profiteering as wartime sabotage. Except . . . what if it IS a Vermeer masterpiece? Patriot or Quisling? Past Jewish resistance member Joseph Piller, now with the American Army, is trying to figure this all out, but the Dutch authorities want to handle it on their own, rush thru a trial, then execute the bastard. Not a bad true story, but Friedkin’s film is a terrible mess. The first half loaded with needless exposition, pointless personal backstory and chases thru the streets (nice period detail); the second, mostly courtroom drama and surprise 'reveals' barely worth a Perry Mason episode. None of the actors have any rapport with anyone else on screen, Claes Bang seems too TALL to connect to anyone as the Army investigator, and in a regrettable first, Guy Pearce is an unwelcome presence on screen, overdoing John Malkovich tics & tricks to play the usual arrogant prick/genius who lives to brag about his unsung genius and annoy with a highly theatrical, uppity attitude. (Malkovich can pull off these creepy characters; Pearce, hands aflutter, junior league at theatrical posturing.) With a final twist so inconsequential, it may cause you to inverse gasp. ( A shrug?) Turns out, some people in Occupied countries sucked up to the Nazi elite big time. Quelle shock!
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: With Alain Delon in peak form, Joseph Losey delivers a devastating look at a similar subject in M. KLEIN/’76. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/03/monsieur-klein-1976.html
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