An exciting plot, a workmanlike script, and good performances from Peck and Olivier help overcome the complete implausibility of the premise. It's fun seeing what may be Steve Guttenberg's best performance. And Lilli Palmer was still gorgeous, even in her 60s.
The worst thing about watching it for the first time is knowing beforehand what the film's big, shocking revelation is (in fact, summaries of the film's plot tend to give it away, apparently not realizing that it's supposed to be an epiphany). I would really like to have seen it without knowing in advance just what Ezra Lieberman was going to figure out about the mysterious deaths of those harmless old men.
Those who have looked into Mengele's postwar career will be amused at Peck's makeup. In an effort at accuracy, it is based on a picture which was widely circulated for years in the belief that it showed a middle-aged Mengele. In fact, the man in the photo was just some poor South American shlub who had the misfortune to be snapped by an overenthusiastic photographer. We now know that Mengele himself was much less impressive in his later years, with his sagging jowls, gray hair and walrus mustache. In fact, photos show him as rather friendly-looking and avuncular--except for his eyes, which are stone cold.
This film, of course, has nothing to do with the real Mengele's postwar life. Mengele was not a commanding, white-suited figure, living the high life in expensive hotels, attending parties with sycophantic underlings, and continuing his hellish experiments in a jungle laboratory. He lived out his days as a sad, pathetic weasel of a man whom nobody liked. That's a better fate for Mengele...but it wouldn't make such a good movie.
The worst thing about watching it for the first time is knowing beforehand what the film's big, shocking revelation is (in fact, summaries of the film's plot tend to give it away, apparently not realizing that it's supposed to be an epiphany). I would really like to have seen it without knowing in advance just what Ezra Lieberman was going to figure out about the mysterious deaths of those harmless old men.
Those who have looked into Mengele's postwar career will be amused at Peck's makeup. In an effort at accuracy, it is based on a picture which was widely circulated for years in the belief that it showed a middle-aged Mengele. In fact, the man in the photo was just some poor South American shlub who had the misfortune to be snapped by an overenthusiastic photographer. We now know that Mengele himself was much less impressive in his later years, with his sagging jowls, gray hair and walrus mustache. In fact, photos show him as rather friendly-looking and avuncular--except for his eyes, which are stone cold.
This film, of course, has nothing to do with the real Mengele's postwar life. Mengele was not a commanding, white-suited figure, living the high life in expensive hotels, attending parties with sycophantic underlings, and continuing his hellish experiments in a jungle laboratory. He lived out his days as a sad, pathetic weasel of a man whom nobody liked. That's a better fate for Mengele...but it wouldn't make such a good movie.