Then, the Red Army invades, and your stepfather and stepbrother are killed by the Russians. Two years later and the Russians have been replaced by the Germans. Simon Wiesenthal and his wife Cyla are transported to a forced labour camp while Simon's mother is sent to the concentration camp of Belzec where she later dies. Simon eventually ends up at the infamous concentration camp in Mauthausen, Austria while Cyla manages to escape and go into hiding in Warsaw. Now fast forward to the end of World War II, and while watching former SS guards being interrogated by the allies, Simon Wiesenthal realizes that he would like to help the investigators gather information on the war crimes carried out.

What follows is a lifetime given up to the pursuit of those Nazi war criminals who had evaded the allied clutches immediately following the war - and it isn't easy. Based in Vienna, a city closely associated with Hitler, Wiesenthal's home is firebombed by neo-Nazis and his wife held hostage. However nothing would deter the man from his work which has only just finished with his death at 96, two years ago.

Produced by the Wiesenthal Centre's documentary unit, this film was put together for a memorial dinner held in Wiesenthal's honour last year. Even though it was produced by his supporters, the documentary doesn't completely brush over some of the controversies that sprung up around the man during his career; however you would have to do some serious soul searching, if at the end of it all, you found yourself questioning the man's integrity.

You could forgive Simon Wiesenthal for being a man driven purely by revenge and a hatred for Nazis, but this was not the case and as Wiesenthal himself explains, he aimed to bring enlightenment not revenge, and the hope that the world would never forget the millions that had died in the concentration camps throughout Europe.

Civil law that is written into the books, challenged, and repealed to suit the needs of society is not what this is about. Those laws are an ever-changing creation by man; the oil that keeps the machine running smoothly, till suddenly a small bearing becomes overheated then the law needs an amendment.

War is the glaring example of that irrefutable natural law, what goes around comes around. If Hitler had been a peaceful man and channeled his effort for the betterment of his people and country, ww2 would not be in the history books and I would have stayed home to help my father log his patch of timber.

I believe Hitler died in his bunker.

Human blood soaked into the battlefields, while grieving mothers, widows and orphans, learned to cope. Munitions plants and arms production built their personal freeway to the bank. Millionaires raised their profile to Billionaires forgetting about the natural law that would balance the scales, unless by some miracle the scales have been balanced.

Not very likely: The scales have never balanced through millenniums of time. Until man learns how to love his neighbor, stops holding a gun to his head, gives him food and water, and above all takes the time and has the patience to simply understand, there is little hope for early improvement.

When a country, any country, wages war against another country the scales of time become unbalanced for a long time. The battle may be won with guns, but the war is won through negotiations by intelligent people that understand the disastrous outcome if they fail. Right now a match is ready to drop in tinder dry forest. It's time to put away the match and hope for rain.

There’s some good stuff in here but there it’s over edited. It’s like Eastwood wanted to shoot a war movie but later realized that the point was real heroism verses heroism by fame. So he chopped it up. There are two other, more likely, reasons for the strange flashback/flash forward style. The first is that all the stuff on the home front was dramatic but boring and the interjected, slowly evolving, war story helped break up the potential monotony.

Another possible reason is that Iwojiima didn’t lend itself to story. Like most major battles there are a thousand stories and you have to pick one and follow it. Unlike the war in Europe much of the fighting in Asia wasn’t witnessed by a civilian population (millions of empathetic peers). Another difference is that wars are fought differently in Asia. Secret societies, assassins, psychological warfare, and guerrilla warfare were perfected throughout Asia. In some ways we were as surprised by the way war happens in the orient as the British were by the way war is fought in America during the revolution. Viet Nam proves this point.

In Viet Nam however the controversy became a huge target for movies. The entire Japanese front in WWII was the victim of the glorious early days in Europe. From General George C. Marshal turning a 40 thousand man army into a 5 million man army in time for D day, to the creation of new paratrooper divisions, our entry into a war and drive for quick victory against the back drop of our own ancestral homes makes an easy story. The Japanese were considered a strange enemy with a strange culture. We fought for desolate piles of rock in the middle of the pacific. It was tremendously expensive and it was the bitter end of our resources and resolve. It was a tough story.

What about the “R” Rating?

This is a war movie and it is graphically violent. You either like this kind of film or you don’t. If we look at “Saving Private Ryan” as the benchmark this movie is roughly equivalent. Unlike Ryan this movie breaks up the fighting scenes giving us a chance to be re-shocked with each scene of violence.

This one thing is noteworthy. There is a character that was taken prisoner and tortured by the enemy. His remains are found, but not shown. We are only shown the response of another character when he sees them. My hat is off to Mr. Eastwood for using this classic technique rather than trying to prove that modern special effects are up to any challenge. It allows our imagination to fill in the details and it relies on the actor to convey an emotion, ie act.

What if I hate Clint Eastwood?

Then you aren’t an American. Come on you’d hate Dirty Harry. That’s like hating Jimmy Stuart. He doesn’t appear in the film, but he seems to have done everything else including some of the music.

Larger Story

The major theme of the movie is heroism real and imagined. This movie has a lot to say on the topic and it’s interesting that it would be directed by Clint Eastwood—who doubtless wonders about movie “action heroes.” Most of the hero stuff in this movie is true and well stated. Unfortunately it’s berried a bit behind a very subtle anti-war theme.

The storyline of the film is a son having to go to great lengths to discover who his father is. He finds out that not only was his father set up as a hero but he really was a hero. Most importantly he comes to terms with the reason his father never opened up with the details of his life. It’s very likely that this movie will resonate with a lot of men and I have refrained from dogging it despite some of its aspects which failed. As a whole the picture worked.