Please don't spend money on this.

Overrated and overhyped

Crappy film

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

"Klaus Barbie. Sometimes known as the Butcher of Lyons" is the quote I remember in the film Rat Race, obviously not the fashion doll Barbie that's made millions over the years haha. This is how I found out about Klaus Barbie, the focus in this French / German / English language film, that I found in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, directed by Marcel Ophüls (The Sorrow and the Pity). Narrated by Jeanne Moreau, basically this film deals with the life, career and trial of Nazi SS officer Klaus Barbie, known as the Butcher of Lyons, virtually all aspects of his life are covered. This includes Barbie's childhood and school life in Germany, his early experiences in the military and progressing career, his role in the head of intelligence in Lyons, his employment before World War II by the U.S. military, his life in Bolivia, his return to Europe, and his trial and conviction for his crimes against humanity. Interviewed throughout the film are friends, enemies, associates, heroes and traitors of Barbie. I will be honest and say that I could not fully keep up with who was who in the contributions, especially when it kept changing languages and subtitle translations, but most of what was being discussed was interesting enough, so it was an alright documentary. It won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. Worth watching, in my opinion!

German-born American documentary filmmaker Marcel Ophüls' fourth documentary feature which he wrote and produced, was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 41st Cannes International Film Festival in 1988 and is a France-USA co-production. It tells the story about 44 children from a Jewish orphanage in Izieu, France and the collaborators, friends, enemies, supporters, accomplices and victims of a husband and father of two who began his long-lasting career as a Nazi during the early 1930s in Germany and the acts he committed by himself and was helped to commit against humanity.This somewhat biographical, historic, political and comprehensive post-war Germany story which is narrated from multiple viewpoints, in an objective way and through the voices of survivors of torture, former leaders of the former French Resistance, former members of the former Counter Intelligence Corps in the United States, former activists, attorneys, journalists and people who experienced WWII and it's aftermath, is an informative and incisive examination of French and German history, war crimes, the displacement of guilt and an investigative journey through the places where the main character grew up, studied, took up residence and carried out clandestine operations.This multilingual, conversational and important non-fictional feature is impelled and reinforced by it's interrelated stories, the absence of visual effects, of the subject himself, the director's presence, his way of conducting interviews and the presence of the interviewees who as much as the filmmakers are the creators of this documentary. An unsettling, heartrending, revealing and disenchanting documentary feature from the late 1980s which gained, among other awards, the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 61st Academy Awards in 1989 and the FIPRESCI Prize at the 41st Cannes Film Festival in 1988.

Although this movie is quite disturbing at times, due to its subject matter, I would go as far as saying I enjoyed watching it. It has left me quite shaken up and I know I will be thinking about this film for a long time. As a lover of languages, I appreciated the jumping back and forth between French, German, and English. Overall, it is very well done. For such a serious topic, it is done with appropriate humor and pauses for reflection. It's intense, but not unbearably so. Because it made me want to learn more, to do research even, I have given Hotel Terminus a 10.

The film is very good but sags in the third hour. However, you must stay with it. Take a break, have some coffee, and come back. I saw this film a good five years ago, but the final few sentences were so moving I remember them still, word for word. It must be seen. We're talking hot tears and goosebumps.