Woodward and Bernstein may have been intrepid, but they have nothing on Peter Miller, a freelance reporter who goes underground to reveal Nazis working in postwar West Germany to destroy Israel, circa early 1964.
Okay, Miller isn't real, but rather a character in Frederick Forsyth's novel "The Odessa File" brought to screen in 1974 with Jon Voight in the role of Miller. Not to be confused with the later, weaker Nazi-hunting potboiler "Boys From Brazil" (though the real-life Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal is a character in both), "Odessa File" benefits from a very involving opening and a clever, cathartic twist of a closer, though the two-plus-hour film gets soggier than sauerkraut much of the time in between.
Are we speaking German in this movie, or English? Director Ronald Neame can't seem to make up his mind, and it's a bit disconcerting to hear an old German army vet give a speech in accented English before his comrades break into a Teutonic sing-along. Voight often seems lost in a film where he is bounced around like a pinball, his gaze like that of a deer in the headlights, albeit a righteous deer. A lot of the actors around him similarly feel unmotivated, even the great Maximilian Schell who plays Miller's chief prey, a former camp commandant named Eduard Roschmann. Efficient though Roschmann may be, there are some gaping holes in the Nazi secondary Miller more stumbles through than exploits.
"The Odessa File" also has one of the oddest movie scores, fronted by a credit theme which, as all taut thrillers must, features Perry Como and a children's Christmas chorus. I kid you not. The incidental music is electronically processed '70s drivel that seems more suited for "Logan's Run," and was the brainchild of none other than Andrew Lloyd Webber, apparently wanting to try something different while waiting for inspiration for another libretto to strike then-partner Tim Rice.
But the film does deliver in the suspense department, setting up a nicely paranoid atmosphere wherein the sweet woman sent by the police to look after your girlfriend could be a spy helping a team of killers track you down. It may oversell the reach of the real ODESSA, a Nazi relocation group, in West Germany, but the screen treatment is at times quite gripping and believable, and of course features Nazis as bad guys, which seldom fails for entertainment.
You understand a bit of the mania behind Miller's actions, if not exactly his methods, when you see in flashback the way Roschmann handles his captives at Riga. Even after "Schindler's List" and other films have presented the same material in more graphic fashion, there's a lot of power in the scene of a woman looking at her husband before the door of a deadly truck closes over her face, or a moment when Roschmann toys with a man awaiting execution for a giggle.
If it's not as good as Forsyth's book, the film suffers from the same faults. The improbability of the scenes grows more apparent with repeat viewings, but a first-timer will likely be too involved much of the time to pay this much mind. And, like the novel, "Odessa File" the movie has a good heart. And what an ending! Don't let anyone spoil that for you, if you are the least bit tempted about seeing this; see it for yourself.
Okay, Miller isn't real, but rather a character in Frederick Forsyth's novel "The Odessa File" brought to screen in 1974 with Jon Voight in the role of Miller. Not to be confused with the later, weaker Nazi-hunting potboiler "Boys From Brazil" (though the real-life Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal is a character in both), "Odessa File" benefits from a very involving opening and a clever, cathartic twist of a closer, though the two-plus-hour film gets soggier than sauerkraut much of the time in between.
Are we speaking German in this movie, or English? Director Ronald Neame can't seem to make up his mind, and it's a bit disconcerting to hear an old German army vet give a speech in accented English before his comrades break into a Teutonic sing-along. Voight often seems lost in a film where he is bounced around like a pinball, his gaze like that of a deer in the headlights, albeit a righteous deer. A lot of the actors around him similarly feel unmotivated, even the great Maximilian Schell who plays Miller's chief prey, a former camp commandant named Eduard Roschmann. Efficient though Roschmann may be, there are some gaping holes in the Nazi secondary Miller more stumbles through than exploits.
"The Odessa File" also has one of the oddest movie scores, fronted by a credit theme which, as all taut thrillers must, features Perry Como and a children's Christmas chorus. I kid you not. The incidental music is electronically processed '70s drivel that seems more suited for "Logan's Run," and was the brainchild of none other than Andrew Lloyd Webber, apparently wanting to try something different while waiting for inspiration for another libretto to strike then-partner Tim Rice.
But the film does deliver in the suspense department, setting up a nicely paranoid atmosphere wherein the sweet woman sent by the police to look after your girlfriend could be a spy helping a team of killers track you down. It may oversell the reach of the real ODESSA, a Nazi relocation group, in West Germany, but the screen treatment is at times quite gripping and believable, and of course features Nazis as bad guys, which seldom fails for entertainment.
You understand a bit of the mania behind Miller's actions, if not exactly his methods, when you see in flashback the way Roschmann handles his captives at Riga. Even after "Schindler's List" and other films have presented the same material in more graphic fashion, there's a lot of power in the scene of a woman looking at her husband before the door of a deadly truck closes over her face, or a moment when Roschmann toys with a man awaiting execution for a giggle.
If it's not as good as Forsyth's book, the film suffers from the same faults. The improbability of the scenes grows more apparent with repeat viewings, but a first-timer will likely be too involved much of the time to pay this much mind. And, like the novel, "Odessa File" the movie has a good heart. And what an ending! Don't let anyone spoil that for you, if you are the least bit tempted about seeing this; see it for yourself.