Irie212
I had seen The Statement when it was released 14 years ago, and I remembered it as dull and, well, unmemorable. But when it turned up streaming, I decided to give it another try, largely because of the story, but also the cast. On second viewing, the performances do not disappoint. Unfortunately, they are not showcased in a well-crafted or well-conceived movie. NB: Serious spoilers follow. Also, first, two caveats.1. The film is based on the Brian Moore novel of the same name, which itself is based on the life of a Nazi collaborator named Paul Touvier. I haven't read the novel, but in the film, the dramatic ending is complete fiction, because Touvier died of prostate cancer in prison. In fact, from what I've read of Touvier-- who was a thoroughly despicable man-- this film is fictionalized almost beyond the bounds of historical fact.2. Though it was filmed in the South of France, the movie is British and Canadian. It takes an Olympic leap of faith to accept players from Alan Bates to Tilda Swinton to Ciaran Hinds as French, and no one more so than everybody's favorite Cockney lad, Michael Caine, as Pierre Brossard (the fictional Touvier), but it's a crucial leap, so limber up. When we meet Brossard, he is still haunted by his war crime, which is shown in black- and-white flashbacks: in 1944, he executed seven Jews near Lyon. My problems began there, because I didn't believe in his contrition. Instead, I suspect that the filmmakers attached the flashbacks to his memory just as a convenient way showing the crimes and therefore conveying the gravitas of his actions to the audience. His contrition, if any, is also inconsistent with the rest of Brossard's character, but it does have the added benefit of making his ardent Catholicism a critical element of the plot But never mind. Let's say he was haunted. He is also now hunted, because of a new law about "crimes against humanity" which makes him retroactively a criminal. Unfortunately, that raised the next problem. I felt almost no suspense in what is inherently a suspenseful story- - a hunt. We naturally wonder, of course, if Brossard will escape, but this is a tedious film. The opening sequence sets the pace. Grey- haired and sweater-vested, Brossard is spotted in a cafe by an assassin. Brossard drives off, the methodical assassin follows, and they meander along, up into the hills around Aix. We watch them for several minutes, with one or two other cars coming and going. Close- ups are mixed with aerial shots, but there is no energy, and without energy a chase scene is a traffic update.The one suspenseful scene, oddly, has little to do with somebody being hot on somebody else's tail, although there is a tail. Brossard seeks refuge with his estranged wife (Charlotte Rampling), who dotes on the dog he had given her years ago, an aging pet he threatens to kill if she doesn't help him. My suspense-meter started spinning in that scene, but nothing comes of it. (As an aside, couldn't it have been a new puppy? Just to have something bouncy in the movie?) Even when he's escaping over rooftops, I found myself wondering if the old guy would slip and fall rather than if he'd be caught or shot. When he stops to catch his breath and check his watch while he's making a getaway, I checked mine, too. Lest this review seem like a simple lament that Norman Jewison is not Alfred Hitchcock, let me quickly change gears: I'm not looking for Bullitt-esque chase scenes. Nor do I care if the actors are, as one IMDb reviewer said, "long in the tooth" (Who did he expect to see in a movie about people surviving 50 years after World War II? A Daniel Craig, or even Radcliffe?) Let me, as they say, cut to the chase:The characters are necessarily geriatric, but the film didn't have to be. More time could and should have been spent on motives and methods of the chasers than on the tiresome chase itself. Whether they're out to get Brossard or to shelter him, the complexities, and indeed the morality of the motives, are not fully explored, though they involve fascinating factions: First, the French government (Jeremy Northam as a police colonel, Tilda Swinton as a jurist, Alan Bates as a minister, John Neville in an unspecified role of power). Second, fellow survivors of the Vichy regime, who are also in danger of being hunted, or betrayed by Brossard if he is caught and successfully interrogated or manipulated. Third, there is the suggestion that a faction of Nazi hunters are in play, but this is muddy. Fourth, and perhaps most profoundly, the Catholic church, in whose picturesque abbeys Brossard finds protection as a devout and at least superficially penitent believer. That is, until Rome cuts him off. That is where the focus should have been-- on the conflicting motives of these factions, years after the war-- because in effect, Brossard was finally nothing but a pawn caught helplessly in the forces of history. But this film has no force, and is disappointingly vague on history.
whpratt1
Enjoyed this great drama and thriller dealing with the killing of seven French Jewish people during World War II. Pierre Brossard, (Michael Caine) was present during the execution of these Jewish people and after many many years pass, Pierre is still being hunted down and goes into hiding within the walls of the Catholic Church in France and he is even given financial help in order to stay protected from being killed. One day, Pierre is driving his car and is followed by a man who was out to kill him and Pierre whipped out a gun and killed this man without any problems. This picture also shows how religious Pierre is because he is always praying and asking priests to absolve him from the killing he has recently performed. Tilda Swinton, (Annemarie Livi) and Jeremy Northam, (Colonel Roux) are both assigned to investigate this case which has been reopened and they both gave great supporting roles, it looked for awhile there might be some romance between these two, but they seemed to like flirting than getting into a serious romance. Michael Caine might be getting older, but he sure carried this film on his back, right to the very end.
neil_mc
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
