Dull and obvious

Rating: 4/10 (6 August 2015)

This is not a bad movie, it is just an awfully tedious and oh so predictable one. Helen Mirren does her formidable best to bring her character to life but regrettably she simply has no material to work with and the performance is formulaic. The intermingling of past and present is constantly irritating and while the spoken German is a brave attempt at authenticity - though Viennese it is not - it is also jarring. What really kills the movie however are two things, the absolutely clunky script and the mediocre direction. You know exactly what's coming and how it's going to arrive. Yawn, just more Nazi kitsch. Regrettably even Mirren can't rescue this plodding effort