I saw this movie at a festival screening in D.C. So much potential is wasted by student-level writing and direction, which is all the more incredible given that second-time director 'John Daly (qv)' has produced some of the best movies of recent decades. 'Martin Landau (qv)' giving his usual all as Jewish-Hungarian industrialist Joseph Krauzenberg can't make up for the patchy character development elsewhere - what there is of it. 'Judy Parfitt (qv)' as his wife Rachel throws out token lines of accusation and irony one would expect from an adolescent when a stony silence from such a part would send cheap gangster Heinrich Himmler ('Danny Webb (qv)') to the corner, hanging his head in shame.
And these heavyweight characters are just the background for the title characters, who work as the Krauzenberg's butler and maid. After the others are all done, we still have another 40 minutes of the picture to follow the title characters' fates. I won't go into further story detail here, but I'll just say that 'Caroline Carver (qv)' shines much, much brighter than her sketchy part calls for; look for her in better work. 'Kenny Doughty (qv)' doesn't overcome his title character's limits; virtually anyone else in the cast could have played the part.
For that matter, Daly's casting veteran British and Irish stage actors to play Nazi Germans and Jewish Holocaust victims is old hat, and a classic mark of a limited budget. In this day and age, budget or no, they're no substitute for locals playing local parts - audiences today see through it. Movies are about the audience not seeing through it.
All in all, it's sadly obvious Daly's real project wasn't this story; it was his curiosity at trying his hand at directing. He had the resources to make it big-project slick, but not the vision to make it memorable after I left the movie-house.
And these heavyweight characters are just the background for the title characters, who work as the Krauzenberg's butler and maid. After the others are all done, we still have another 40 minutes of the picture to follow the title characters' fates. I won't go into further story detail here, but I'll just say that 'Caroline Carver (qv)' shines much, much brighter than her sketchy part calls for; look for her in better work. 'Kenny Doughty (qv)' doesn't overcome his title character's limits; virtually anyone else in the cast could have played the part.
For that matter, Daly's casting veteran British and Irish stage actors to play Nazi Germans and Jewish Holocaust victims is old hat, and a classic mark of a limited budget. In this day and age, budget or no, they're no substitute for locals playing local parts - audiences today see through it. Movies are about the audience not seeing through it.
All in all, it's sadly obvious Daly's real project wasn't this story; it was his curiosity at trying his hand at directing. He had the resources to make it big-project slick, but not the vision to make it memorable after I left the movie-house.