THE STATEMENT (SONY PICTURES CLASSICS, 2003)***

By Rick Jackson

Based on a true story, The Statement is a throwback to the Cold War thrillers of John Le Carre and Graham Greene. Michael Caine stars as Pierre Brossard, a Frenchman who was involved in the execution of Jews in 1944. After the end of World War II, he is wanted as a war criminal. When the story picks up in 1992 in France, you learn he has been living in exile in various Roman Catholic monasteries and safe houses. He has been protected by an inner circle of friends in a Catholic society, one which is dwindling due to the changing political climate within the church itself.

The screenplay by Ronald Harwood (The Pianist), based on a novel by Brian Moore, is inspired by real-life war criminal Paul Touvier, who executed Jewish hostages and was protected by an informal network of right-wing Catholics.

Although based on fact, it focuses on the last years of Brossard as he tries to escape from the clutches of a Jewish group who are bent on killing him for his war crimes.

Some American film critics, like Ebert and Roeper, felt the film was shallow and unconvincing as a historical drama. I strongly disagree. Harwood gives you just enough to hold your interest. The rest of the story you have to listen to carefully to unravel the plot threads.

Flashbacks in black and white tell the story that has haunted Brossard and it precipitates his heart condition. The sequence between him and his ex-wife Nicole (Charlotte Rampling) lets you experience the tension that once filled their lives and the awful result.

Tilda Swinton plays Annemarie Livi, a judge who wants to get at the truth behind Brossard's statement in which he presumably confessed. It all becomes more cloak and dagger like an Alfred Hitchcock film, with the statement serving as a macguffin.

Along the way she joins up with Colonel Roux (Jeremy Northam) who shares the same empathy and concern for Brossard. The two make a great team and there are some close calls as they try to get to him first.

In supporting roles, there are the key higher ups in the French government: Armand Bertier (Alan Bates in his last role) as a close friend of Levi's, David Manenbaum (Matt Craven) who once was an officer who stood beside Brossard in the killings of Jews, and John Neville as a man whose loyalty was once for Brossard but has suddenly changed for political reasons that are unexplained.

Caine gives one of his best performances as a man hiding from his past. You see him play a role that shows him with the same cunning for survival, such as two scenes when he defends himself against two assassins, and the timidity of an old man trying to live out his final years in exile.

Under Jewison's direction, The Statement is an absorbing thriller from beginning to end.

February 21, 2004

Copyright 2004 Rick Jackson