Anthropoid

Plot synopsis:
It is the height of Nazi occupation in Europe.
In December 1941, two agents from the Czechoslovak government-in-exile, Jozef Gabčík (Cillian Murphy) and Jan Kubiš (Jamie Dornan) are parachuted into their occupied homeland. Jozef is injured when he crashes through a tree upon landing, but both men set out to find their contact in Czechoslovakia. They are discovered shortly after by two resistance fighters who turn out to be traitors; one is shot by Jozef but the other man escapes. Stealing their truck, the agents head for Prague.
When they seek out their contact, they are directed to Dr. Eduard (Sean Mahon), who stitches Jozef's foot, and arranges for the agents to meet other members of the resistance, led by "Uncle" Jan Zelenka-Hajský (Toby Jones). The agents reveal that they are to execute "Operation Anthropoid," the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich (Detlef Bothe), the main architect of the Final Solution, and the head of Nazi forces in German–occupied Czechoslovakia.
With limited intelligence and little equipment in a city under lock-down, Jozef and Jan must find a way to assassinate Heydrich, an operation that, they hope, will change the face of Europe. With the help of two young women, Marie Kovárníková (Charlotte Le Bon) and Lenka Fafková (Anna Geislerová) along with other plotters, the agents plan to ambush Heydrich as he arrives at his headquarters by car. When the agents learn that Heydrich is about to be transferred, the plan goes into effect with the duo bolstered by the addition of other agents who have been parachuted into Czechoslovakia and the remaining resistance fighters in Prague.
On 27 May 1942, the attack is carried out but nearly botched when Jozef's Sten submachine gun jams, but Heydrich is severely wounded when Jan throws a bomb that shatters his limousine, followed by Jozef's fusillade of gunfire. Immediately after, the assassins go on the run, and Nazi forces round up thousands of Czech citizens and carry out a terrible reprisal. When Heydrich dies, the combined group of seven parachutists are pursued to their refuge at the Orthodox Cathedral of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Prague. Resistance fighter Karel Čurda (Jiří Šimek) turns on the agents and reveals where they are hiding. The family who Jozef and Jan stay with are punished, their house attacked by numerous officers. The mother commits suicide by taking a cyanide tablet in the bathroom. The son is brutally tortured, which leads him to give in to the Nazis' demands. He tells them where Jozef and Jan are hiding, in the cathedral. Hundreds of Nazi troops storm the cathedral and all the agents are killed in a fierce battle.
Reprisals continue with the village of Lidice destroyed with all the males 16 years old and older shot, children gassed to death and women sent to camps. Another Czech village, Ležáky, is also destroyed and its inhabitants are murdered because a radio transmitter is found there. Ultimately, a total of 15,000 Czechs were killed in the aftermath of the "Heydrich Terror". The assassination of SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich was the only successful government-organised assassination of a top-ranking Nazi in the Second World War.

Tags: revenge, violence, flashback

Review:
"Anthropoid" opens with two resistance fighers, Jan Kubis a Czech (Jamie Dornan) and Jozef Gabcik, a Slovak (Cillian Murphy), being parachuted into Czechoslovakia after their training in England.
On 27 May 1942, at a tight street corner in Prague, two resistance parachutists - the Czech Jan Kubi and the Slovak Jozef Gabčík stopped an open top car carrying the Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich with the intention of carrying out the most high profile assassination of the Second World War. The consequences - both personal and political - were enormous.
My strong interest in the assassination is because it took place at the height of the wartime exploits of my Czech night fighter pilot father-in-law, so that I included a couple of paragraphs about it in my biography of him, and the church in which the assassins Kubi and Gabčík died is literally at the end of the street in which my closest Czech friends live, so that I have visited it several times.The year after the assassination which made massive world news, Hollywood rushed out two films - "Hangmen Also Die" and "Hitler's Madman" - which gave highly fictionalised accounts of the event and its aftermath.
So "Anthropoid" (2016) - the code name for the operation - is the fifth work to bring these events to the big screen and again this is a British-inspired work shot on location (in what is now the democratic Czech Republic).Britain's Sean Ellis is director and cinematographer as well as co-writer and he has produced an accomplished work which is even more faithful to the facts and makes even more use of original locations than "Operation: Daybreak".
Another change is that the parachutists are shown as more human, given to bouts of doubt and fear.The 1975 and 2016 films follow a very similar narrative arc, beginning with the jump by Kubi and Gabčík and ending with their death, so that the actual assassination attempt is the hinge for the two very different segments tonally: the tense preparation and the ferocious aftermath.
His latest, written and directed by himself, is the true story during WWII in 1942, Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of SS General Reinhard Heydrich, Hilter's third in command and main architect of the Final Solution, better know as the Butcher of Prague, or the Blonde Beast and the Hangman.
We see the emotional struggle between the two comrades and fellow resistance, as priorities and understanding of what is to come, changes.Toby Jones, who happens to get into everything recently, plays supportive uncle Hajskŷ and I recognise Charlotte Le Bon from this year's Bastille Day. And I think the only native to act here is Czech model Anna Geislerová who looks a little like Joan Allen and Amber Valletta.
After months of slogging through big-budget, special effects studio films that were just "fine" all summer, I've finally encountered a hidden gem that is well worth watching.ANTHROPOID is a World War II film starring Cillian Murphy that tells the true tale of a group of Czech resistance fighters on a mission (Codenamed ANTHROPOID) to assassinate Nazi SS General Reinhard Heydrich, the "Butcher of Prague".
Ellis creates a group of real people (the drama part of the film) with real relationships operating undercover in a very dangerous situation (the thriller part) in order to carry out orders to assassinate the #3 in command of the German hierarchy (the action part).Some will find the first hour of the movie a bit slow as Ellis builds up his characters and their relationships.
This turns out to be an important slow burn build-up and really pays off as the action starts heating up the screen and you are really invested in what happens to these people.The acting is top-notch starting with Murphy, who I looked at in this movie and wondered why he isn't a bigger star.
It's a beautifully filmed, but gut-wrenching scene  think of the last stand at The Alamo.An extended shootout (6 hours in real time) may not seem like a fun day at the movies, but this story goes to the bravery and desperation of those who refused to give in to the relentless savagery of the Germans.
Having seen all three other post-war film verisons covering this remarkable true story (Atentat, Operation Daybreak and Man With the Iron Heart), Anthropoid is without any doubt the best of them.
"Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once." Shakespeare's Julius Caesar If you delight in the fantasy violence of summer blockbusters, you will lose any romantic notions about it when you see the real deal in Anthropoid, a based-on-actual-events biography about seven WWII resistance fighters who parachute into Nazi-held Czechoslovakia.
Their job: assassinate the third highest ranking officer of the Reich, Reinhard Heydrich (Detlef Bothe), the Butcher of Prague.As in all dictatorships, never a safe moment exists, and writer-director Sean Ellis, along with writer Anthony Frewin, emphasizes both the bravery of the fighters and the brutality of the Nazis in a quagmire of deceit and fear.
Anthropoid makes Planet of the Apes look like The Sound of Music.After Army of Shadows, Anthropoid ranks as one of the best resistance stories in film history."Satan understands the power of men and women united in righteousness." Sheri L.
This movie intends to change that with a crash course on history engulfed around a thrilling main plot to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, the architect behind the Final Solution.Jan Kubis (Jamie Dornan) and Josef Gabcík (Cillian Murphy) are sent by the Czech government-in-exile to assassinate Nazi Germany 3rd-in- command SS Officer Reinhard Heydrich, which is code named Operation Anthropoid.
But I was pleasantly surprised how much detail they actually included - the location, the characters, the events - they are really accurate.I never saw 50 Shades of Grey, but I must say I might watch other Dornan's movies, because he was brilliant as Jan Kubi, he made a person out of a martyr's name in my history notes.
I also appreciated the Czech words and signs and songs and generally, creating a Prague of 1940's that actually feels like Prague.The only thing I did not really like was how they incorporated love stories into the movie - not only it was NOT historically accurate (Gabčík had a girlfriend whose name was Anna Malinová)but it was also a little too forced.
The direction has a modern feel but keeps a steady pace and the script is good but as is most the case in modern day movies ....The Acting is really poor Murphy and Dornan are truly unconvincing with dreadful accents, what a shame it really it could have been a great remake of a very good attempt back in the 70's,I would suggest to go and see this and make your own mind up, but also watch the 1970's movie Operation: Daybreak (1975) too..
Adding to the feeling of authenticity is the location filming in the streets of Prague, as well as the costuming and background music of 40's standards.The cast is a good one and the only change I would like to have seen is a different star in the leading role.
And the film's final 45 minutes present one of the most intense shootouts that I've ever seen.Written by Sean Ellis and Anthony Frewin and directed by Ellis, I actually came into the screening fresh, meaning I genuinely had no idea what to expect because as much a history buff as I am, this specific section where there was actually a mission to assassinate SS officer Reinhard Heydrich, was one that I may have somehow missed out on from the textbooks.
With limited intelligence and little equipment in a city under lock down, they must find a way to assassinate the architect behind the Final Solution.This film spends a lot of time humanizing the two leads, the two soldiers, by slapping the story on with some romance, which to me could backfire, because it could mean the difference between Michael Bay's "Pearl Harbor" and Bryan Singer's "Valkyrie" for example.
An apt film to watch, as it happens, on Remembrance Sunday here in the UK, retelling the Czech Resistance plot to kill the third highest ranking Nazi in their hierarchy at the time and enforcer-in-chief of the heinous Final Solution against the Jewish race, Reinhard Heydrich, an act of courage and heroism only matched by the manner in which the two young perpetrators of the deed and their back-up team of supporters and fellow-fighters met their inevitable dooms in the face of overwhelming odds as the Germans flushed them all out with tactics of bribery and torture.
The argument is made about the wisdom of assassinating just one man provoking the inevitably brutal response from the SS (over 5000 innocent civilians slaughtered as reprisals for the deed), but I think the film correctly comes down in favour of the group's valour in standing up for their country against a brutal, occupying oppressor.The direction goes a long way, as you'd expect, to making us see that the Czech defenders are only human, as we see them betray their own fears, argue over planning, mishandle their weapons and in the almost botched commission of the attack, as opposed to the ruthless efficiency of the Nazi machine.
In the end you're so rooting for the freedom-fighters that you will each of them to successfully commit suicide rather than be killed or worse, if captured by the SS.Interestingly, the Heydrich character makes no appearance at all in the film before the scene where he's attacked, I think the director here assumes a certain degree of historical knowledge on the audience's part as we don't need to see any overt on-screen demonstration of evil on Heydrich's character to understand that he was a legitimate target for killing by the resistance.
Perhaps the film took a little while to hit its stride, as it sought to build up the background of the lead characters, the explosive siege scene at the church where the fighters made their last stand had a slightly exaggerated feel about it too, while the ghostly after-life appearance of a slain girl-friend at the moment of one of the Czech hero's death was, in my opinion, a misguided cinematic insertion at odds with a film striving for everyday realism, likewise the quotation lines from Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" seemed more like a grafted on screenwriter's device than what really happened.Nevertheless, this is a sombre, but ultimately uplifting and inspiring tale of everyday heroism, a testament to the spirit of the Czech people and made me think on this day of all days of who would stand up and be counted today under similar circumstances.Lest we forget..
Anthropoid takes its name from the real-life Operation Anthropoid, which was the attempt by Czech resistance fighters in 1942 to assassinate Nazi General Reinhard Heydrich, the "Butcher of Prague." This film is exceptionally realistic and stays very close to the actual historical events.
"Anthropoid" (2016 release from Czech Republic; 120 min.) brings the story, "based on true events" we are reminded at the beginning of the movie, of the attempt by Czech resistance fighters to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, the No. 3 guy in the Nazi hierarchy (behind Hitler and Himmler) and better known as the "Butcher of Prague".
'Anthropoid' tells the tale of a group of soldiers sent to Czechoslovakia to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, also known as 'The Butcher Of Prague', during World War II.
Have we really seen the last of the glory days of good movies with real actors like Charlton Heston , Chalres Bronson, Yul Brynner to be replaced by Dicaprios and Afflecks - oh dear?This was a turgid step by step remake with non of the suspense and realism of the original and most of the acting was wooden and somehow disconnected from the actual story however factual it might be - that is when you can actually understand what the actors are mumbling at and what is with no subtitles for the German voices?To add insult to injury they didn't even pay respect to the people who were involved in the operation and who risked their lives as they did at the end of the original film - Poor very shabby remake - why bother if you are not going to try something new or at least polish the story but i guess in this case you definitely cannot polish a turd!.
Anthropoid, while initially plodding and unexciting, redeems itself with a final act that truly had my heart thumping - but without either proper exploration of the characters or discussion of the moral issues at stake, this film is a straightforward action/thriller which should have been kept to 90 mins.The film depicts the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich - a nasty piece of work and a high-ranking one too, although no-one I discussed this film with knew anything about him beforehand.
There then follows an extensive action scene, in which the Nazis attempt to capture or kill the remaining Czech resistance members, and the tension did not let up until the end of the movie.
I don't usually think depictions of brutality and torture are necessary in films, but the brief scene in this works perfectly: firstly it raises your pulse at the beginning of a final act which doesn't let it subside, and secondly it makes the audience absolutely desperate for the Czech resistance members not to be taken alive during the subsequent action.
I have always been interested in this Operation.I have seen the memorial plaque in the UK.I also saw an exhibition in Prague which commemorated the assassination and the deaths of all those who died as a result.I have to say that I did not like the camera-work where the camera was constantly moving.I think that Operation Daybreak is a better film as it showed a bit of Heydrichs time as Reichsprotector,and the attempts to save him.In fact the film only really gets going one the assassination is begun.The film does score heavily by showing the sheer dread of everyone not just at the repercussions but even knowing about the plot.It is interesting to note that Heydrichs was the only top ranking Nazi to be assassinated by the Allies.They did not seriously contemplate doing this again.Heydrichs was a monster who deserved his fate,but was the price worth it?.
i was always a fan of these types of 'History Channel' documentary like films(also liked the TV series VIKINGS);& was hit by 2 surprises in this movie;in addition to the director(same guy who made Metro Manila!!!);the first shooting took me aback(first 5 minutes of movie);sometimes, a trick question by the gestapo( German dressed up to look like ordinary Czech farmer(?)>>'...you can sleep in the barn;you are welcome to stay,'; Cillian Murphy soon finds out how dangerous it is to land in his mother land,now annexed by the Germans; also the scene where the actual assassination takes place, after casing out the target for several months, & after meticulous planning; the day finally comes; as the German military officer's car rounds the corner,Cillian(Josef gabcik)springs into action: the popular French Resistance weapon,a British Sten gun, which never malfunctions,'malfunctions'!; the hand grenade goes off,but only destroys the vehicle!; the occupants get out & return fire; & the resistance fighters flee for their lives,thinking the plot had completely backfired; Hundreds of SS troops surround the hospital where Heydrich was taken; so he must have survived; but later succumbs to his wounds; 5,000 Czech citizens are rounded up & executed in retaliation...
We follow Jozef and Jan as they make their way to Prague, searching cautiously for their contacts within the Czech Resistance, before stationing themselves into position in order to plan the assassination.Director Sean Ellis delivers a hugely accomplished effort here, in what is essentially a film of two halves.
It's a really interesting true story, so much so that I was eager to see another filmed telling about the plot to assassinate Nazi commander Reinhard Heydrich.
Movie Review: "Anthropoid" (2016)A hauntingly-surprising World-War-II action thriller with historical sophistication directed by Sean Ellis, who also stops denying to operate a fast-rhythmic-passing Super 16mm film camera by Arri Munich Rentals accompanied with superb-looking Hawk V-lite 16 lenses, when editor Richard Mettler puts an engaging cast surrounding freedom fighters Jan Kubis and Josef Gabcik, here match-making from the very first parachute-descends into push-play atmospheric snowy forest actor Jamie Dornan, known for "Fifty Shades of Grey" performing to utmost anxiety-denying beats of war action, when spy agent partner Cillian Murphy, acknowledged for leading Danny Boyle's horror-thriller "28 Days Later" to international successes, as "Anthropoid" continues with a relentless assassination plot in ultra-focused on trafficking Prague daytime streets action scenes to rebounds with fantastic range-playing actor Toby Jones as needed suspense-adding support into a fully-immersive final rebel-stand-off from bullet-storming hallways of city's center church to floated basement confronting inevitable conclusions of Officer-avenging Nazi-oppressors that puts the 20 minute showdown into the major league of being able to compete with any Hollywood comparable.
I am just going to be honest here, don't get mad at me, and I know they were speaking Czech but you could barely understand what they were saying, even if it was English.Anyways the story if you're not familiar with and to be honest I didn't really care about these two guys who plans to assassinate Hitler right-hand man SS General Reinhard Heydrich.If this film wasn't free I wouldn't have even bothered.
ANTHROPOID is based on the true story of 'Operation Anthropoid,' the code name for the Czechoslovakian operatives' mission to assassinate SS officer Reinhard Heydrich, the main architect behind the Final Solution who was the Reich's third in command behind Hitler and Himmler and the leader of Nazi forces in Czechoslovakia.
For those who haven't seen the 1973 film Operation Daybreak, which covers the same story (As will the film Hhhh, also coming out soon) Anthropoid tells the story of the plot to assassinate Hitlers 3rd command, Reinhard Heydrich of the SS, whose job it was to hunt down and kill the remaining few resistance of Czechoslovakia in Prague.