Review of Amen.

One of a plethora of films about the WWII Jewish holocaust, "Amen" is a fact/fiction accounting of German SS officer Kurt Gerstein's futile attempts to ameliorate the extermination of Jews in Nazi death camps; particularly his appeals to Pope Pius XII whose papacy was at the center of a firestorm of postwar criticism for everything from negligence to cowardice. This serious minded film portrays Gerstein, a technical consultant who reluctantly helped plan the gassing of Jews, as a man tortured by conscience who attempts to exploit his position with the SS in support of the Jews. "Amen" offers good production value for a story which is probably too esoteric and anticlimactic to have broad dramatic appeal among movie patrons. Given that the ratio of fact to fiction is lost in history and the outcome is a given, "Amen" will find little appreciation beyond those with an abiding interest in the holocaust. (B)