Movies about history work best when they can detail the personal stories behind the headlines.  In this case, the headline is that in 1960 Isreaeli agents were able to apprehend Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and return him to Israel for trial.  But the real story is that the capture was difficult and complicated, made more so as Eichmann began conversing with his captors, alternately baiting them toward killing him on the spot, making a case for his innocence and delaying them so that he might be found before being smuggled out of the country.

Chris Weitz’s film is appropriately taut and suspenseful, especially as the smuggling operation is delayed for more than a week and the Israeli agents get to know their captive far more intimately than they would prefer.  Matthew Orton’s script, based largely upon memoirs by the actual participants, relies heavily on the byplay between agent Peter Malkin (Oscar Isaac), who lost his sister in the Holocaust, and Eichmann (Ben Kingsley), a mild-mannered man who often seems incapable of inflicting mass murder upon an entire race of people.  Their tenuous connection humanizes the plot and brings it rather brutally to life.

The film succeeds as a suspense thriller, gaining speed as the Argentinian Nazi’s learn of Eichmann’s disappearance and fan out to find him before he can be forcibly deported.  It works as a character study, pitting the Israelis, who are dead set on vengeance with honor, against the single person who ordered millions of their compatriots and family members to be executed.  It works as an allegory about the nature of evil and whether a public trial could ever compensate people for their personal losses suffered during the war.  And it works as a deeply personal story as one person faces his own demons which threaten to wreck the mission.

Operation Finale is not the first movie to be made about the capture of Adolf Eichmann, and it probably won’t be the last.  But it is an important story, one which needs to be told and retold, as generations move farther and farther from the horrible events that forced the world into war almost eighty years ago.  It is a cinematic story, filled with danger and risk, personal tragedy and national retribution.  It is a very well acted and directed movie which carries continued relevance and meaning.  ☆ ☆ ☆.  6 November 2018.