Anthropoid

I'm very much looking forward to the dubbed version, which is probably a first. But otherwise, I have to admit that Anthropoid is a tasteful perspective from the outside and a good counterpart to The Assassination. The Czechs have small roles and, led by Aňa, they add to the atmosphere and the final shootout will make you hold your breath and keep your eyes wide open. (02/10/2016)

Of course we would prefer if it was made by Spielberg or Polanski with their elegant optics and artistic touch. Anthropoid has nothing like that. But let’s be glad Sean Ellis made it into at least a decent action thriller. The actors are fine given that the screenplay doesn’t give them much to work with and the period atmosphere is captured well. Ellis also gives it the necessary momentum, like a mechanical but skillful cameraman who knows how to achieve both dynamics and fluidity. The climax in the cathedral is satisfactorily long and precisely escalated. And the main thing: when watching Anthropoid, I was proud for a moment that I come from Czechoslovakia. (04/10/2016)

The expectations were sky-high and the result was definitely worth it. Having said that, I definitely recommend watching this movie – if possible – with dubbing. This might be the only movie for which I would recommend that, but at the same time I believe that it’s still better than listening to that “Czech” English spoken by English actors, which, according to the director, was his intention to be able to differentiate Czechs from Germans. And I don’t hold it against him. I got over it quite quickly, but I understand that it might be grating for some people. What was worse was the camera, which in some crucial action scenes was flying around like a rag on the broom wielded by a Ukrainian cleaning lady. But what the hell, I got over that as well and I have to admit that despite some uncertainty during the assassination scene, I was literally excited about the final scene in the church. And that was despite the camera flying about, which added the right amount of confusion to the scene and thus created undoubtedly the best war scene of the past few years. But it’s not only about these individual things. Anthropoid deserves praise mainly as a whole. I don’t think I’ve seen such cooperation between Czech and English filmmakers. That cooperation alone makes the movie unique in my mind. If somebody is giving this a two-star review, I guess they watched the same movie but didn’t perceive what I did. This was the first time that somebody wanted to take a story from Czech, or rather Czechoslovak history and present it to the whole world. And Adam Ellis was a great choice in my opinion. This incredibly sad story deserves global attention. And I believe that Anthropoid did its best! (03/10/2016)

The assassination of Heydrich is undoubtedly a very strong theme, which this time was taken up by several countries, which had both advantages and disadvantages. For me personally, the biggest stumbling block was the unconvincing and dull performance of the actors in the first two thirds of the film, which was to some extent also caused by the fact that none of the actors used their mother tongue. I would honestly put the romantic line aside completely, because I found it mostly redundant. Nevertheless, the film picks up from the interrogations and the final church siege was very well shot and staged. Pity about the lacklustre and uninteresting (two-thirds of the way through) start. (07/04/2020)

A solid performance with the likeable Cillian Murphy/Jamie Dornan duo. The first half is a bit too slow for me, but after the assassination the film picks up decently, there are some disturbing scenes and it all culminates with an excellent church shootout that has a lot of pizzazz and drive. A decent film about us. 75% (25/10/2016)