The Statement
Just as you aren't sure how much more you can take of Norman Jewison and Ronald Harwood's tasteless hunt-the-war-criminal thriller, ''The Statement,'' it's over, and we're told in a mournful coda that the film's been made in the memory of the more than 77,000 murdered French Jews. This is presented as a righteous dedication. But as well meant as it may be, the tribute has the insulting sting of self-congratulation.
''The Statement'' concerns steely judge Anne Marie Livi (Tilda Swinton), by-the-book Colonel Roux (Jeremy Northam), and their attempt to catch Pierre Brossard, the rat who, at the height of World War II, was responsible for the execution of seven men. Older now, he's been pardoned from a death sentence, but, as played by the unstoppable Michael Caine, he's still as crafty, lethal, and hard to kill as his ''Get Carter'' thug ever was. Apparently, a Jewish organization is out to assassinate Brossard, dispatching one hit man after the next to put a bullet in him and leave a note -- the eponymous statement -- justifying his murder.
Livi and Roux prefer Brossard alive, which puts them in a race against the assassins. The judge and the colonel close in on Brossard, seemingly always arriving minutes after Brossard's latest amazing, bloodstained escape. But Brossard isn't all that Livi and Roux are after. They also want to nail the cabal of priests and Vichy pals who have been sheltering and supporting Brossard for years.
But ''The Statement'' seems content to be a one-sided assault. It doles out an assembly line of wizened, Nazi-loving Catholics and sub-John le Carre exchanges, such as this one between a contact and Livi: ''You will be caught in a web,'' he says. To which she wonders, ''Who's the spider?''
Early last year brought us Costa-Gavras's similarly infuriated but far better reasoned and written ''Amen,'' in which the Catholic Church was implicated in the Holocaust. But that film centered on an appalled priest who finds Christian anti-Semitism unconscionable. ''The Statement'' opts for a more flagrant approach. The filmmakers feel safe wrapping their trashy sensibilities and crass agendas in the gauze of historical fact and good intentions, dragging Catholic figureheads through muck in the name of retribution. But Jewison and Harwood flatter only themselves.
With his adaptations of ''The Pianist'' and ''Taking Sides,'' Harwood has become a Holocaust reframer de rigueur. ''The Statement'' is based on a page-turner by Brian Moore, and, accordingly, Harwood's screenplay obscures any sort of philosophical, religious, or historical considerations in favor of pulpy and faith-bruising sensationalism. As for Jewison, his outrage has stripped his filmmaking of all sophistication.
What we wouldn't give for a bit of Robert Bresson's intelligent soul-searching, Costa-Gavras's muscularity, or even the harder-won indecency of Carlos Carrera's ''The Crime of Father Amaro,'' which dared to bash the Catholic Church without casting religion into eternal damnation.
No matter how often we see Brossard pray, belief never occurs to this movie, yet action sequences do. Jewison has the movie flying at a breathless clip, pouring on reputable talent, from Ciaran Hinds and the late Alan Bates to Charlotte Rampling. In the film's second-greatest insult, Rampling plays Brossard's ex, a haggard maid. Her casting is hardly on par with the human-rights crime that this movie is trying to dramatize, but it's a sin nonetheless.
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