Hammerman Ikon

Hammerman Ikon Film Guide

Munich: The Edge of War
2021
**½
Director: Christian Schwochow
Cast: Jeremy Irons, George MacKay, Jannis Niewöhner, Sandra Hüller, Liv Lisa Fries, August Diehl, Jessica Brown Findlay, Anjli Mohindra, Ulrich Matthes

Hugh and his German friend Paul studied together at Oxford. In 1938, when the continent is at the brink of war, Hugh works as prime minister Neville Chamberlain's secretary and Paul works at the Foreign Office in Berlin, and they both get embroiled in a plan to disclose Hitler's real plans for Europe. This pre-war drama tells a fictional story against a real-life background, but the end result is never as captivating as it should be. Ben Power's screenplay is based on a novel by Robert Harris, and it spends an awful lot of time on the difficulty of handing over a confidential document, which turns out be nothing but a MacGuffin. Christian Schwochow's restless camera is a needless distraction.