Operation Finale
Short description
Operation Finale is a historical drama set in 1960, fifteen years after the end of the Second World War. A team of Israeli secret agents is sent to Argentina to track down Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official who helped organize the Holocaust and who has been living there under a false name with his wife and children. Working under the direction of Mossad agent Peter Malkin, the group watches Eichmann's daily routines in a Buenos Aires suburb and prepares to abduct him and smuggle him out of the country to stand trial in Israel.
Chris Weitz directed the film, his sixth feature after Down to Earth, About a Boy, The Golden Compass, The Twilight Saga: New Moon and A Better Life, and before Afraid. Matthew Orton wrote the screenplay. The cast includes Oscar Isaac as Peter Malkin, Ben Kingsley as Adolf Eichmann, Mélanie Laurent as Hanna Elian, Peter Strauss as Lothar Hermann, Nick Kroll as Rafi Eitan and Lior Raz as Isser Harel. Oscar Isaac also produced alongside Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and Fred Berger.
Released in August 2018, the film had a budget of 24 million dollars and took about 18 million dollars worldwide. It holds a 6.6 rating on IMDb from roughly 54,000 votes and a 6.7 on TMDB from a much smaller number of votes, while critics rated it 6.1 from 134 reviews.
What's left behind the scenes
- According to Ben Kingsley (who played Adolf Eichmann), he kept a photograph of Elie Wiesel (1928-2016, an American and French writer, journalist, and public figure of Jewish descent) with him at all times on set. This served as a reminder of his historical responsibility and that he should honor the memory of Eichmann's victims (1906-1962), rather than Eichmann himself. The actor had done something similar while filming Steven Spielberg's historical drama "Schindler's List" (1993), when he constantly carried a photograph of Anne Frank (1929-1945) in his pocket. Kingsley stated that after everything he had learned about Nazism while preparing for his roles in previous films, nothing surprised him anymore while studying his character before filming with Chris Weitz.
- The razor held by Peter, played by Oscar Isaac, is inscribed with 'Solingen'. This is the name of a city in Germany that manufactures knives, razors, scissors, and the like, and where Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962) was born.
- In the film, Eichmann is transported to Israel on a British turboprop airliner, the Bristol Type 175 Britannia, designed for medium to long-haul routes.
- Eichmann was the one who organized the transportation of Jews by rail to the concentration camps, and this activity of his (among other things) served as the basis for his death sentence in Israel. This is not stated directly in the film, although hints of this connection are present. Against the backdrop of the opening credits, a hand (presumably Eichmann's) is shown marking concentration camps and European cities on a map of Central Europe with pins. The opening credits also show a train schedule, and towards the end of the credits, the camera pans back to reveal a map of Europe crisscrossed with railway lines highlighted in red leading to concentration camps.
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