Operation Finale: A taut, fact-based espionage drama

Operation Finale (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, violence, highly disturbing content and occasional profanity
By Derrick Bang

The scariest monsters are the ones who look and act completely normal.

Say, like the kindly retired gentleman who lives next door, and often can be found in his garage, putting the finishing touches on a wood-working project. When it turns out that he’s a serial killer living under an alias, wanted in seven other states for the murders of at least 15 people, his neighbors shake their heads and — if interviewed for the local news — say “We had no idea.”

Peter Malkin (Oscar Isaac, left) believes that he can manipulate Adolf Eichmann
(Ben Kingsley) into cooperating with the Mossad abduction team ... but they're likely
underestimating their captive's guile.

And then lie awake at night, eyes wide open, shivering over the possibility that he might have come in their window.

Ben Kingsley plays just such an individual in Operation Finale, and his performance is just as chilling — just as rationally, seductively evil — as Anthony Hopkins’ Dr. Hannibal Lecter, in 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs.

The difference — which makes Kingsley’s performance even more frightening — is that he plays an actual historical figure: Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust.

Operation Finale is director Chris Weitz’s thoroughly absorbing depiction of the clandestine 1960 Mossad mission that tracked Eichmann to an industrial community in Buenos Aires, where he had been living under the alias “Ricardo Klement” since 1950. Because Argentina had a well-established history of refusing extradition requests for Nazi war criminals — which had enabled a sizable community of expat Nazis to continue espousing their genocidal Aryan philosophies — the decision was made to kidnap Eichmann, in order to bring him to trial in Israel.

Scripter Matthew Orton’s narrative focuses on Peter Malkin (Oscar Isaac), one of the eight operatives sent to snatch Eichmann, under the supervision of Mossad director Isser Harel (Lior Raz). Thanks to the Mossad’s 2012 decision to finally reveal details of the operation — and with access to Malkin’s 1990 memoir, Eichmann in My Hands — Orton’s script is able to depict details accurately, while also identifying many of the actual Israeli participants.

The result is a riveting espionage drama with the immediacy of a documentary, and the edge-of-the-seat suspense of a Hollywood thriller.

Isaac’s Peter, in his early 30s and already a veteran Mossad agent, is an outwardly affable individual who’s quick with a wry quip. But the ready smile on Peter’s face does not rise to his eyes, which often are dark with grief. He suffers frequent nightmares — we view them as flashbacks, each revealing a bit more than its predecessor — of precisely how his beloved sister Fruma and her three children perished during the Holocaust. Not knowing is almost worse than the loss itself.

He therefore protests, at least initially, when he’s asked to join the Argentinean assignment by good friend and fellow Mossad agent Rafi Eitan (Nick Kroll). Peter would rather execute the man and be done with it; Harel and Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (Simon Russell Beale) insist that putting Eichmann through a very public trial would be far, far better.

Peter therefore spends most of the film in a deeply troubled state, Isaac deftly conveying the turmoil that digs at the man’s soul. It’s a persuasive performance, given the degree to which Isaac is able to put us into Peter’s head, and allow us to understand his motivations. And fears.

The Drop: A masterpiece of tension

The Drop (2014) • View trailer 
Five stars. Rated R, for profanity and strong violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.12.14

Getting close to two decades ago, Alec Baldwin starred in an adaptation of Heaven’s Prisoners, second in James Lee Burke’s atmosphere-laden series of Dave Robicheaux novels. The film is just this side of brilliant, with director Phil Joanou and scripters Harley Peyton and Scott Frank unerringly catching the rhythm and cadence of Burke’s prose, while Baldwin delivers what remains one of his best-ever performances as the recovering alcoholic, ex-New Orleans cop struggling to endure as he gets pulled into a particularly seamy investigation.

When Bob (Tom Hardy) reluctantly agrees to take care of the abandoned puppy he found a
few days earlier, Nadia (Noomi Rapace) agrees to help him shop for all the essentials. As
is the case with so many other aspects of Bob's life, he simply has no idea how to assume
this new responsibility.

It remains one of my all-time favorite book-to-film translations, in great part because Joanou, Peyton and Frank get Burke just right.

Despite this, the film was dead on arrival, dumped unloved when its studio of origin went bankrupt. As Baldwin was one of the executive producers, I’ve no doubt he hoped to turn Robicheaux into a franchise. Not in the cards, alas. All these years later, I still imagine What Might Have Been.

Turning a noir crime thriller into a film is tremendously difficult, particularly when dealing with a writer whose poetic prose evokes so many striking images. Many filmmakers have tried; most have failed. Director Steven Soderbergh also got it right, with his handling of Elmore Leonard’s Out of Sight. Scott Frank wrote that script, as well.

All of which brings us to The Drop, which joins Heaven’s Prisoners on its lofty perch in my cinematic memory. This is an impeccable noir-story-to-film translation, thanks in great part to the fact that Dennis Lehane adapted it from his own short story, “Animal Rescue” (which, just in passing, would have been a better title for this film, as well).

Lehane apparently liked re-visiting this scenario so much that he expanded the story into a novel, also titled The Drop. But the original story remains readily available via the Internet, and I encourage you to seek it out ... but — promise, now! — only after seeing this film.

Bringing Lehane’s books to the big screen has become something of a cottage franchise; even more impressive is the fact that everybody involved has done such good work. The list is striking: Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone and Shutter Island. But this is the first one Lehane scripted himself, which makes it a standout. And he’s a natural, which is no surprise, given his writing chops (also displayed on several scripts for gritty TV shows such as The Wire and Boardwalk Empire).

His hard-edged dialogue sounds just right; we sense its authenticity even though we’re likely unfamiliar with the archetypes populating this story. Not unless we’re born and bred on the mean, cloistered parish streets of a major metropolis (Boston’s Dorchester in the original short story, inexplicably moved to Brooklyn here). These are people we don’t want to know, neighborhoods we don’t want to inhabit after dark. Probably not in the daytime, either.

But film is a collaborative art; many fine scripts have been destroyed after leaving their creators’ hands. Not the case here: Up-and-coming Belgian director Michaël R. Roskam — who earned a Best Foreign Film Oscar nod for 2011’s Bullhead — has done a masterful job with this tense, brooding story. (Isn’t it interesting, just in passing, that some of the best recent adaptations of American noir novels have been helmed by foreign directors?)