Will I ever get tired of watching Christopher Plummer? This time he is a man who suffers from senile dementia but he sets out to find the former Nazis who killed his family (and the family of another man in the same senior facility) at a long-ago concentration camp. The movie opens with him awakening and calling for his wife. Alarmed, he leaves his room and finds himself in some sort of quasi-medical facility. One of the women who works there has to tell him that his wife died two weeks earlier.
With a wonderfully unpredictable script by Benjamin August ("Class Rank") and cleverly directed by Atom Egoyan ("The Captive"), we are on a hero's journey that goes from gently humorous to white-knuckle tense. The people he encounters are consistently helpful and kind. The children in this one are particularly good: smart, polite and considerate.
The cast:
This is an impossible review to write because I would be spilling the beans, no matter what I say about most of these characters. As I said, this script is unique and unpredictable. Plummer is flawless, with a slight hint of a German accent, the right amount of missing hair, and confused eyes. We feel his anxiety in the passenger bus, at Customs, with that barking watchdog, and amid a family crisis at that mountain retreat. Like him, we loved the children.
The movie is R-rated (threatened violence and understanding concentration camps), so expect some tension, very little profanity, no blowie uppie stuff and limited gun play. Our screening audience was vocal and excited as we exited the theater. This one is outstanding.
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