it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

There seems to be a current trend to drag out what would have made a good two hour film to six or more episodes filled with unnecessary characters who have nothing to do with the plot, presumably to fill in time, all moving along at glacial pace. This series is such, and to make it worse, the main lead has an irritating younger brother Victor, Freddie Highmore, playing the same disturbed character fighting with authority, defying all the rules, and generally getting into trouble before he brilliantly solves all the problems which he plays in the Good Doctor. Set in bomb damaged London in 1946 Callum Ferguson is an army officer who is tasked with bringing over an essential German scientist to our side before the Russians or worse, the Yanks, get their hands on him and he has to accomplish this in four days, later extended to three weeks. The scientist's child does not speak English on day one but by the end of the first week is fluent. The scientist may be one of the war criminals being hunted down by an attractive young woman, a former secret service agent. So many of the characters are superfluous that I don't know where to begin: Alfred Molina as a rather cryptic wealthy businessman (?) who knows which strings to pull and spends most of his time dining as well as he can given the rationing;Angela Bassett as an African american jazz singer - why was she even in it?Freddie Highmore as an annoying younger brother who should have been strangled at birth;Various mysterious Germans as red herrings;A woman scientist/senior engineer working on jet propulsion who appears to be mixed race, possibly part African. Did they even have women working in such exalted positions, let alone mixed race in 1946?Charlotte Riley as a wealthy American widow getting in everyone's way but used as the love interest; and the blond actress/prostitute living in the hotel getting in the Germans' way; The plot is so clunky with plot devices, such as wanted Nazis left alone after being arrested to wait for the police car to arrive, thus giving them a chance to run away - give me a break! Some of the superfluous characters were given a few lines to move the plot which could easily have been given to the main characters. The whole script needed tightening up by a good editor with red pencil and an eye for inconsistencies and holes in the plot. The later episodes of Foyles War covered this same ground so much better. About the only thing which resonated with me was when Lindsay Duncan, as the wealthy widow of a German industrialist, gave a speech in the last episode where she described how she had known of what was going on but did nothing, shutting her eyes and ignoring the disappearances of employees. One was left to wonder if those who did nothing were just as guilty as the war criminals who carried out the atrocities.

I just finished watching the last episode and changed my rating from an 8 to a 9. My high opinion of this mini-series seems to differ from many of the other reviewers and I would recommend that you watch an episode or two and then form your own verdict. I think if you give it a chance, you will find it entertaining and engrossing. The plot is a simple one. After WWII All of the major powers were scooping up German scientists and engineers that could help in advanced technologies, science and weaponry. The story focuses on one British officer convincing one German to work for the British government on designing an aircraft engine that would allow the British to be the first country to break the sound barrier. But the story has so much more to offer.The writing was good but the acting and direction were terrific. The story kept you guessing as to the outcomes of the various plot threads.I notice that some of the reviews were complaining about the lack of realism and the number of subplots, but I think that the writers brought each of them to a satisfying conclusion. I was invested in what was happening to each of the main characters and many of the secondary ones as well.If this was a book, I would not have been able to put it down until I finished it and would most likely read it again as it was that good.On a separate note, I was shocked when I found out through IMDb that I had seen the lead actor in many other films and most recently in a (so-so) TV series as I didn't even recognize him. That is really diving into a character. I hope you check it out for yourself and give it a try.Enjoy!

Stephen Poliakoff has written and directed another masterpiece of a TV series, set in the immediate aftermath of World War II. I am however horrified at the torrent of abuse which this series has received from many sides. Is it possible that audiences are losing the ability to appreciate drama which lasts longer than a soundbite and requires a bit of thought? Or is some of the opposition to the series politically motivated? In this series, Poliakoff deals with his most important subject matter yet. I don't know about the 1938 Foreign Office meeting which figures so prominently in the story, as it may be fictional, but other than that, all the issues in this series are absolutely accurate. It was high time somebody tried to deal with these matters in dramatic form. In his series before last, GLORIOUS 39 (2009, see my review), Poliakoff dealt with the pro-Nazi sentiments of the British Establishment just before the War. Now he has carried those concerns further, by exploring the monstrous events which followed the War, regarding 'the ones who got away' or, more to the point, were allowed to get away with it. By 'it' I mean war crimes, torture, murder, genocide, and all the rest. Although this series deals with the much smaller compass of Britain, the really bad things which happened were in America, where everything was on a gigantic scale. One day, perhaps someone will dramatize that. From 1943 onwards, the 'smart Nazis' were preparing to flee Germany, and most of them later did so. The organiser of all this was Martin Bormann, Hitler's Secretary and manipulator. The organisation he set up was called the Brotherhood (Kameradenwerk), and the ODESSA organisation for fleeing Nazis was only a small part of it. I urge all interested persons to read the fundamental book which is necessary to understand what really happened, namely the meticulously researched book by one of America's leading investigative reporters, William Stevenson, entitled THE BORMANN BROTHERHOOD (1973). It provides the necessary background briefing for anyone who worries about the survival of genuine Nazism to this day, as what has now come to be called The Nazi International. In summary, what happened is this: Germany lost the war, but the Nazis did not. They merely spread and metastasized, no longer requiring their original host body, but finding new places to come to rest, such as Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, Mexico, Sweden (which was never de-Nazified, for which see the books of Stieg Larsson and the films of them), Switzerland, Spain (the headquarters of ODESSSA was in Madrid under Franco), Syria, Egypt (President Anwar Sadat had been a Gestapo agent during the War). The total wealth smuggled out of the Third Reich before the surrender of Germany was worth a few trillion dollars in today's money. Most of the gold of Europe 'disappeared', many ingots being smuggled out in I. G. Farben's tanks of poisonous chemicals. (Gold cannot be destroyed by any chemicals, and customs agents do not open poisonous chemical tanks.) With these funds a Fourth Reich was to be created in the future. Poliakoff has clearly been doing his research for years. He wants to alert the public in the only way possible in a controlled-media world, by means of drama which pretends to be fiction, and superficially is fiction, as far as storyline characters go. All the investigators of war crimes of the Allied governments after the War were side-lined, denied funds, files, and access, exactly as shown in Poliakoff's series. It is all true. Wake up, everyone! We have few details of the operations of the Russians available to us, but we now know a very great deal indeed about the monstrous illegality and immorality of such notorious projects as the American Operation Paperclip and its sister operations, which brought thousands of SS officers guilty of mass murder to America to work as scientists. For instance, Werner von Braun had been a Major in the SS, and his boss Dornberger had been a Major General in the SS. And yet they and their SS chums ended up running the American space programme and creating America's intercontinental ballistic missile technology. (Dornberger, 1895-1980, is wrongly described on the internet as a harmless 'German artillery officer', and his SS status has been covered up.) Dornberger even ended up as Vice President of the Bell Aircraft Corporation. Poliakoff's series concentrates on a single German scientist captured by the British, who is wanted by Britain to create a jet engine by improving and completing Frank Whittle's abandoned one. It is later discovered that he had worked in the German rocket programme where slave labourers were executed on a daily basis, and is in fact a war criminal. But enough of history, let us turn to the series. The outstanding performance is by Alfred Molina, as a senior Foreign Office mandarin. Poliakoff has a peculiarly evocative and elegiac style, and Molina 'gets it', thus effectively taking the place of Michael Gambon as the character who provides the correct 'tone'. Lindsay Duncan, in her supporting role, does the same. That is probably because they are both old pros. The younger members of the cast struggle initially, but finally get into groove and 'find the tone'. Poliakoff's magic comes from this 'tone', which always involves the elevating of memory into a numinous realm, where he attempts to touch some other world. Music is always important in a Poliakoff creation, and it is interesting that scent comes into this one as well, via Lindsay Duncan. (He'll be showering his actors with madeleines next!) Poliakoff charmingly has a child as a main character, played brilliantly by the young Lucy Ward, who speaks with her eyes. There are so many fine performances. Freddie Highmore is genuinely inspired as Victor Ferguson, the autistic brother of the hero, who is played in a droll and head-slanting manner by Jim Sturgess. This series is truly magnificent.

Like many others I stuck with this drama to the end, in the hope that all the loose ends would eventually come together in a meaningful finale. In the event they did not, I felt extremely disappointed, and that I had wasted seven hours of my life.After each episode I have been tempted to stop watching, but have stuck with it, mainly because I am very interested in the period from a historical perspective.I will not repeat here what others have said, but simply wish to register my utter despair and disappointment with this drama by awarding one star.