Steinesongo Too many fans seem to be blown away

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Janis One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Samiam3 Without doubt, there is a strong and complex tale to be woven out of the material. Unfortunately Norman Jewison's adaptation of Brian Moore's novel is a weaving job that leaves too many holes.Beginning in picturesque southern France, The Statement depicts a manhunt in for a Nazi who was sheltered by a crooked branch of the church. He may have accepted Jesus, but there is still a dark side to him. Right at the beginning of the movie, he has no hesitation to put a bullet in a cop that pulls him over on a country road. He has killer in his eyes at that moment, and then suddenly seems completely overcome with guilt and fear as he disposes of the body.From there, the film drags along with thinly written dialog, and no sense of character enlightenment. There is a half decent scene where the Nazi refugee confronts his wife, but otherwise, the script has nothing to show in him. He is less of an individual and more of a crude representation: the manipulated product of the church who believes that his soul will be saved though prayer.The feds and agents who are on his tail are even more one noted. To even call them characters would be a stretch. They are merely faces representing intelligence.As a director, Jewison has mailed this film in. He cannot even make the most of a European rooftop chase scene, like the one that ends the climax. The camera-work is as dull as the editing and the pacing. The Statement is a lack luster attempt to tackle a complicated subject.

dbdumonteil What I have to say is first a repetition of what most of the users have already pointed out:Michael Caine is an exceptional actor;even when the character is a b..... ,he almost makes us side with him.A collaborator in occupied France during WW2,he was responsible for the death of seven Jews and he was never punished for what he had done.Pierre Brossard puts his trust in God,and he's always praying Saint-Christopher and begging absolution from his crimes.Outside Caine,best performance comes from Charlotte Rampling ,who,as always,makes the best of an underwritten part.But the screenplay is a novel transferred to the screen ,and it's a NOVEL.There are as many holes in the plot as in Swiss cheese.The judge (a woman of course)and the military man are cardboard characters (but we are spared the love affair between them,just for that,M.Jewison,thank you!!!),and actually we could easily do without them.One of the judge's uncles is a minister/secretary,no less! It's true that fundamentalist Christians have a tendency to support the far right.But making so many abbeys of the South of France a shelter for people like Brossard ,demands such an imagination...It seems that every priest, every monk and every nun of my country are here to protect those who killed the Jews !One often forgets that there are many of them who helped and saved children during those darker days of French history.I have not read the book but I do not feel like doing it.A movie was made in the eighties about Beate Klarsfeld (TV).People complained because they chose Farah Fawcett to portray her ,but at least it was based on accurate historical facts (Klaus Barbie).

bob the moo After the Nazi's were driven out of France, those who had collaborated were mostly rounded up and punished – many by death. However some escaped and were hidden, while others rose in power within the new regime. Pierre Brossard is one of the former and continues to live in fear, protected from those that would avenge his victims by his friends within the Catholic Church. However a close encounter shows that some group is closing in on him, meanwhile political pressure from Judge Livi and Colonel Roux's investigation into his whereabouts mean that he is quickly running out of friends willing to shelter him.It is difficult to know how to approach this film because it itself doesn't seem too sure of what it is trying to do. Is it a drama looking at the idea of fleeing war criminals? Is it a chase movie? Is it a character piece looking at Brossard? It is never clear because it does do some elements of each but it doesn't really do anything that well and I, as a viewer, was a bit confused about what I was supposed to feel or think during it. The story itself is OK, reasonably engaging but not having anything of interest to it. As a chase film I was interested and the themes helped it seem more than the sum of its parts but not in reality. The motivations of the characters are never that well developed; the Livi/Roux parts are dull and quite routine although the sections with Brossard are more interesting.It is a shame then that the film cannot decide what it wants to do with him – do we feel for him, hate him or just watch him? The film doesn't let us decide this in a good way representing the complex nature of the character, but rather just doesn't push out any ideas one way or another. Caine does well despite this and gives a good character a bit of depth. He is where the film is although he probably benefits from the fact that everyone else is quite ordinary. Swinton and Northam are quite ordinary and their parts of the film just seem put of place and half-cooked. Support from Neville, Bates, Rampling and others just about do the job but add little.Overall this is an OK film but nothing at all more than that. Despite the interesting and complex potential the film just delivers an ordinary chase movie and fails to do anything with the ideas and concepts inherent in it. Caine does well to produce quite a convincing character but he is alone in that, with the material and the rest of the cast failing to do anything that interesting. Not bad but not worth trying to find because it is nowhere near as good as one would have hoped.

Martin Bradley Norman Jewison's film version of a little-known Brian Moore novel posits a few interesting ideas - the role that the Catholic Church has played in sheltering Nazi collaborators from justice and whether it is right to pursue an otherwise penitent man for crimes committed fifty years earlier. Given the subject matter, a director with a record for top-notch entertainments, a first-rate cast and a script by the redoubtable Ronald Harwood, the film itself never catches fire, at best passing the time rather than actively engaging the emotions.One fault may be in accepting the high-toned, plummy British cast as French, (Tilda Swinton gives a terrible performance as the judge on the trail of Michael Caine's war criminal). On the plus side, Caine himself, Cockney accent notwithstanding, gives a superlative performance as the hunted criminal, casually out-classing everyone around him.