Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

WELCOME! Use the search engines on this site (or your own off-site engine of choice) to gain easy access to the complete MAKSQUIBS Archive; more than 5500 posts and counting. (New posts added every day or so.)

You can check on all our titles by typing the Title, Director, Actor or 'Keyword' you're looking for in the Search Engine of your choice (include the phrase MAKSQUIBS) or just use the BLOGSPOT.com Search Box at the top left corner of the page.

Feel free to place comments directly on any of the film posts and to test your film knowledge with the CONTESTS scattered here & there. (Hey! No Googling allowed. They're pretty easy.)

Send E-mails to MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com . (Let us know if the TRANSLATE WIDGET works!) Or use the Profile Page or Comments link for contact.

Thanks for stopping by.

Thursday, April 27, 2017

DER STAAT GEGEN FRITZ BAUER / THE PEOPLE VS. FRITZ BAUER (2015)

Nearing the end of his career, German Attorney General Fritz Bauer finally gets a strong lead on the whereabouts of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, but little support in following it. It’s the late ‘50s and Bauer, the rare case of a returned German Jew in the Adenauer government, is both surrounded and stymied by the ex-Nazi officers, many former SS, he’s forced to work with. The last thing they’d want is for Herr Eichmann to go on trial in Germany, spilling long-buried war stories. So Bauer tries an end run, working his operation thru Israeli Mossad agents. Effective, but illegal; and technically traitorous. It’s fascinating true stuff, and writer/director Lars Kraume finds a good new angle with a gay blackmail subplot involving Bauer’s past and, in the present, an assistant on the ‘down-low.’ Yet the material doesn’t reach full potential. The characters come across (the assistant especially well-cast, with the guilty look of a handsome ex-Nazi Youth now going to fat), but trips to Israel, Argentina or Paris miss out on tension & style. Maybe if Kraume had filled us in on some of Bauer’s earlier accomplishments? A major figure in the fight for internal de-Nazification, we only get the info we need at the end of the film. It gives this more than decent film the low impact of a school report.

DOUBLE-BILL: Fritz Bauer is a supporting character in the Oscar® nominated LABYRINTH OF LIES/’14 (not seen here), a similarly themed story that takes place half a decade earlier.

No comments: