Costa-Gavras was never my idea of a great director, and here he performs a tiresome retelling of one of the lesser-known atrocities of the war: the trial of six men held in French prison for minor crimes who have been retroactively charged with capital offenses. (spoiler) The Germans demanded it, the Pétain government eagerly acquiesced and it was left to the special tribunal to try the men and sentence them to death.
The first 45 minutes are really dull; the scriptwriters must have realized that few people would know or understand the subtleties of French politics and justice, so we get characters speaking great amounts of expository dialog. We have to wait until the tribunal is finally selected and the cases are presented to see the drama begin to unfold.
The flower of the acting profession is here: Louis Seigner, Pierre Dux, Jean Champion, Julien Bertheau, Michel Lonsdale and others, and they all do a good job. Yves Robert and Bruno Cremer as two of the condemned men are impressive. The DVD I saw had no subtitles for the scene of the German officers at dinner, which tells me Pathé Métropole must be on a tight budget.
The first 45 minutes are really dull; the scriptwriters must have realized that few people would know or understand the subtleties of French politics and justice, so we get characters speaking great amounts of expository dialog. We have to wait until the tribunal is finally selected and the cases are presented to see the drama begin to unfold.
The flower of the acting profession is here: Louis Seigner, Pierre Dux, Jean Champion, Julien Bertheau, Michel Lonsdale and others, and they all do a good job. Yves Robert and Bruno Cremer as two of the condemned men are impressive. The DVD I saw had no subtitles for the scene of the German officers at dinner, which tells me Pathé Métropole must be on a tight budget.