The Statement

"The Statement" deserves far better ratings than critics have given it. In the first place, it's NOT about an ex-Nazi in flight. It's about a French collaborator, the Vichy Government, France's failure to confront the role its officials -- some still in power -- played in the Holocaust, and the efforts of right wingers in the Catholic Church to shelter the collaborator. Michael Caine is superb in the leading role, and Tilda Swinton and Jeremy Northam are excellent as the judge and army colonel who are trying to bring him to justice while those who formerly hid him seek to execute him, blaming a non-existent group of Jewish vigilantes. The supporting cast, which includes the wonderful Charlotte Rampling in a minor role as the collaborator's undivorced wife, is also quite good. I don't see how anyone can complain that this movie "drags." While there are legitimate criticisms that could be made about unexplained motives, the action moves at the appropriate pace given the complexity of the story it is telling.

I dare say this film would have been much better received had it cast the film logically rather than have 'everybody's favourite Cockney' Michael Caine playing somebody called Pierre Boussard - I mean, Caine has never struck me as a "Pierre" somehow. And we can say for sure, that it couldn't have done any worse, a $22m financial loss is testament to that.

Of course I realise the book is in English, but there is a big difference between the two mediums and very rarely does a film pull off a stunt like this, see 'The Hunt For Red October' or Jude Law's Russian misfortune in 'Enemy At The Gates'. At least The Statement didn't slip into having Caine and co. adopt Gallic accents - that would have been too much to bare.

As for the film itself, it seemed a complete waste of police time to have half of the French PD chasing round after an OAP with a heart condition who'd been *ordered* to kill seven people 50 years earlier during German occupation. And for the film to set itself up as some sort of chase thriller, it very rarely gets past a stroll and the tension never really reaches the levels it should do.

All that said though, there are far worse films out there and this isn't an altogether bad way to spend 2 hours. 6/10

Michael Caine carries "The Statement" on his back. In spite of an elegant cast, without him as the central character, this convoluted mess of a film wouldn't be worth watching. Telling of an aging French-Nazi war criminal who finds himself on the run and squeezed in the jaws of subterfuge, "The Statement" is too vague in its historical flashbacks, gives poor depth into its sundry characters, breaches realism with a bunch of Brits in France, never makes its agenda clear, and doesn't sort itself out well in the end...to mention just a few of the flaws. The result is a film with a lukewarm reception by critics and the public at large and little reason to watch save another excellent performance by Caine. In spite of all that, I quite enjoyed this flick. Go figure. (B-)

I rated this film a 7/10 - with some mixed feelings, because in many ways it was a downbeat film without any kind of neat "message" that would make me feel "a better person" for having seen it. But on second thought I realized that the finished film rather neatly reflects the moral complexity of Brian Moore's novel which it is based upon - and which Ronald Harwood's screenplay follows remarkably closely.

Brian Moore is one of my favorite late 20th century authors, whose work has provided the basis for several other memorable films, most notably "Black Robe." He writes in a Graham Greene-esque mode, his characters often anguished or guilty Catholics or ex-Catholics who struggle to live morally in a degraded and corrupt world. Moore himself appears to have known much about divided loyalties and twentieth century alienation. Although identified as a Canadian author, Moore was born in Ulster - and actually lived most of his later life in California and the South of France. He was clearly fascinated by questions of faith, of good and evil - and he boldly tackled these themes in "The Statement."

In France in the late 1980s and early 1990s there were several prominent cases of Vichy-era collaborators who were belatedly brought to justice by the French court system. Moore was clearly fascinated by the way in which leading members of the French governmental and bureaucratic system continued to hide unpleasant truths about their own pasts - and by the role of the Catholic Church in France in providing refuge and assistance to some individuals who had been involved in the persecution and round-up of Jews.

Michael Caine deserves a great deal of credit for taking on the role of a reprehensible character who nonetheless retains his full humanity. There's never any question in the film about his guilt - he clearly took part in the brutal murder of Jews during wartime. (He's also quite mean to dogs.) And yet he is not without a sympathetic side. It's clear that he's manipulative, but it's also easy to see why many intelligent and devout people of faith would be willing to assist him in his attempt to live "underground" hiding from justice. Caine isn't a caricatured film villain - not like Ralph Fiennes in "Schindler's List" or John Malkovich in "Ripley's Game." But in a real sense, it's all the more disturbing that he seems like "just another innocuous old man."

It was disappointing to me to see that fine performers Jeremy Northam and Tilda Swinton with so little to do in the film - other than looking bewildered as Caine's character continues to elude their grasp. On the other hand, it is quite enjoyable to watch their flirtatious glances with one another. There were many nice touches in the film showing the pleasures of French life - gourmet business lunches, for example, and the beautiful scenery of Provence. Even the supposedly seedy cafes look like they belong in a tourist brochure.

Your comments will be displayed as follows: A good adaptation of Brian Moore's thriller novel, director Norman Jewison's "The Statement" has its ups and downs.

Michael Caine, who has played many English roles as well as being an American abortion providing doctor, now takes on elderly Frenchman Pierre Brossard, once a shining star of the toady Vichy police force without which the Nazis could never have murdered some 77,000 French Jews. A small percentage of the Holocaust toll but not an unimportant one. Among other acts he participated in the roundup and murder of seven Jews. Such an incident was the basis for the novel.

A man who may belong to a Jewish revanchist organization is killed by Brossard before he can shoot the wheezing, cardiac condition-afflicted former right-hand helpmate for the SS. He's been sheltered for forty years by members of the Catholic clergy.

Tilda Swinton is Judge Levy assigned along with Jeremy Northam, a French army colonel, to find and bring Brossard to trial based on a new law reviving prosecutions against those who committed crimes against humanity. Actually, every important actor in this film except for Charlotte Rampling, who has a small role as Brossard's wife, is English. I'm surprised the French actors' union didn't raise a stink.

This is a chase film with Judge Levy and her colonel either warm or hot on the trail of Brossard who goes from monastery to monastery receiving food, money and help. (In France a judge has vast investigative authority and can and does direct inquiries so the director could credibly have Swinton going from city to city. Imagine Judge Judy flitting about in a chopper ferreting out facts.) At times I thought I was watching a travelogue about the abbeys of Gaul.

There are, of course, hints of a dark conspiracy reaching beyond the Church that I won't reveal.

Caine's peripatetic suspect is deeply religious in the formulaic sense that absolution and ritual salve his conscience but in no way mediate his actions. Caine plays a dirtbag to perfection.

Possibly to avoid charges that the film is unfairly anti-Catholic we're told that

1) the Church is vast, has many subordinate bodies, and those at the top just can't know all that is happening (this defense comes from a gentle librarian-Jesuit priest who also happens to be black, the predominant racial group in the French church).

2) responsibility for aiding genocide by clerics was individual so don't trot out any revisionist Hochhuth/Cornwell/Goldenhagen theories arraigning the Church's leadership.

3) we can't forget that the Resistance was largely communist so maybe there's a rational justification for Vichy's supine collaboration and the very real clerical support for the Nazis if not for every French assisted atrocity.

I despise the mindless Francophobic reaction to France's lack of support for U.S. policy on Iraq. But for too long Vichy and its spineless leaders, Petain and Laval, never mentioned in the film, have gotten a bit of a free ride. So I was happy to see Brossard made frightened as his pursuers close in.

Enjoyable, some nice scenery. Not much more except that Michael Caine is always terrific. And so is Tilda Swinton who brings focused intensity to Judge Levy's unyielding crusade for justice, for that it is.

6/10.