The Bottom Line
Stiff drama heats up as it goes.
Venue
Hamptons International Film Festival
Cast
Jonas Armstrong, Ben Kingsley, Hannah Tointon, Simon Kunz, Simon Dutton, Burn Gorman, Shane Taylor, William Hope, Flora Spenzer-Longhurst
Director
Mark Schmidt
THE HAMPTONS, NEW YORK -- A sometimes clumsy film recounting an impressive tale of real-life WWII heroism, Mark Schmidt's Walking With the Enemy centers on a Hungarian Jew who was able to save hundreds of others, in part, by using a dead man's uniform to impersonate a Nazi officer. Motivated by an earnest need to inspire, Schmidt's debut suffers from stiffness but improves as it goes, the tension of its plot overcoming many dramatic failings. Mainstream commercial value is hobbled by the abundance of more artful Holocaust survival films, but in special engagements the picture will find some responsive audiences. The presence of Ben Kingsley in a few scenes, as the Hungarian regent struggling to maintain order, will help prospects to some extent.
Jonas Armstrong plays Elek Cohen, whose heroics are inspired by those of real-world Pinchas Tibor Rosenbaum. (Other details have been changed along with the name, like the fact that Rosenbaum employed not a Nazi uniform but that of the Arrow Cross, a Hungarian faction aligned with Hitler's cause.) After escaping from a labor camp, he returns to find that his family has been taken by the Germans, his house and those of his friends given to non-Jewish townsfolk.
Reconnecting with Hannah (Hannah Tointon), a girl he met before the Occupation, Elek finds an operation at Budapest's "Glass House," where the Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz (William Hope) is busy printing thousands of official-looking documents offering his government's protection to Jews. Elek helps distribute these certificates but is soon going much further, dressing as an officer and mingling with the SS in nail-biting scenes in which he passes himself off as the genuine article.
Elek gleans some important information in these conversations, but the emboldened young man is soon taking direct action -- going to places Jews are being rounded up and using his ersatz authority to commandeer them (marching them off "to dig ditches" and instead taking them to safety) or otherwise stop their mistreatment. He makes enemies in these encounters, though, and raises suspicion about his credentials. Kenny Golde's screenplay builds this tension effectively, and Armstrong believably presents a determination that verges on grim mania. As Elek's role-playing makes him face increasingly swampy moral dilemmas, one wonders if storytellers will ever run out of astonishing tales from this terrible period.
Production Company: Liberty Studios
Cast: Jonas Armstrong, Ben Kingsley, Hannah Tointon, Simon Kunz, Simon Dutton, Burn Gorman, Shane Taylor, William Hope, Flora Spenzer-Longhurst
Director: Mark Schmidt
Screenwriter: Kenny Golde
Producers: Mark Schmidt, D. Scott Trawick, Christopher Williams, Randy Williams
Director of photography: Dean Cundey
Production designer: Christian Niculescu
Music: Tim Williams
Costume designer: Oana Paunescu
Editors: Eric L. Beason, Richard Nord
No rating, 129 minutes
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