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List Price: $14.94 | | Label: Sony Pictures
Salesrank: 64277
Released: April 27, 2004 |
| Our Price: $3.44 |
| Used Price: $0.73 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
A former Nazi executioner becomes a target of hit men and the police.
Genre: Horror
Rating: R
Release Date: 10-OCT-2006
Media Type: DVD
Description of The Statement:
Michael Caine's riveting performance is the best reason to see The Statement, a lopsided thriller with conspicuously noble intentions. In crafting a thematic counterpart to his Oscar®-winning script for The Pianist, screenwriter Ronald Harwood draws from another fact-based story set during World War II, adapting Brian Moore's captivating novel about an official French collaborator named Brossard (Caine) who executed seven Jews in 1944, under the Vichy regime of Nazi-occupied France, and eluded justice for decades thereafter. While a passionate French judge (Tilda Swinton) and army colonel (Jeremy Northam) pursue Brossard in 1992, director Norman Jewison smoothly executes a cat-and-mouse plot as Brossard hides in a series of right-wing Catholic sanctuaries. By introducing a conspiracy element not found in Moore's novel, Harwood and Jewison dilute an otherwise riveting story (based on the real-life war crimes of French Milice officer Paul Touvier), resulting in a contradictory portrayal of Caine's sympathetically penitent character. In a film that fails to clarify the maneuvering of its ultimate villains, it's a testament to Caine's skill that The Statement works as well as it does. Charlotte Rampling and the late Alan Bates appear in effective cameo roles. --Jeff Shannon
The Statement Reviews:
Michael Caine and Norman Jewison never let you down. 
2009-11-07 - It's never made clear in this otherwise aboove average movie why some clerics in the Catholic Church are protecting Pierre Broussard, a Nazi collaborator. Are they Nazi sympathizers?
At one point in the film one of the priests sympathetic to Broussard says that Broussard is a good guy because he fought during the War against France falling into the hands of the communists. But, still, Broussard was a Nazi collaborator.
Also, the movie doesn't make it clear how widespread support for Broussard was among the police, the Church and the French government.
I have the feeling that the people who put this film together were afraid to speculate -- or for that matter specifically indicate -- just how widespread the support for Broussard was in the Church, the government and the police.
The movie itself is very well done. I especially like Norman Jewison and Michael Caine's work over the years. The DVD contains a commentary by director Norman Jewison that I wish included Michael Caine. Michael Caine is extremely articulate in discussing acting and filmmaking, so it was a shame he didn't team up with Norman Jewison in discussing the movie.
A Statement From the Left
2009-07-17 - Michael Caine is awesome, as always, in this finely directed and acted tale of a Vichy collaborator pursued by those seeking justice for war criminals. The story has well fleshed-out major characters, and the unrelenting mystery and suspense should hold the attention of most moviegoers. It's unfortunate that the film constitutes still another screed against the Catholic Church, which is portrayed as a sinister organization that pulls out all the stops not just to protect, but even to coddle, a fugitive who has lived off Rome's largesse for decades. Priests and monks scurry to meet his every need and defy the Vatican when told to stop. Because the Church hates Communism, the movie purports, and Jews, the movie hints, the Catholic hierarchy gleefully embraces anyone who aided the Nazis. There is no mention of Catholics who hid Jews or abetted their escapes, not even those officials who made devil's deals to save groups of them. As in so many modern films, any entity that opposes a left-wing agenda must be demonized and discredited. (It seems a wonder the audience isn't treated to a scene with a priest leering at a little boy). What the viewer does get is the requisite agnostic protagonist, a gratuitous flash of a bare male butt, and the notion that the French nobility is still too powerful. Caine, the dog-kicking villain, can't get Nazi victims off his mind, but his only real concern is dying unshriven. Too bad the hateful, intolerant thinking that drove this otherwise excellent feature can't rest in peace.
the statement 
2009-06-14 - item plays excellent and damage free. Arrive timely. No complaints here. Responsive seller. Everything as advertised.
A thinking person's thriller
2009-04-04 - This is a terrific film that has apparently been damned for the sin of reverting to a lower key, more realistic style of drama, reminiscent of Hitchcock, but doing it in the post-Harrison Ford era. By contemporary standards, it must be conceded to be a "slow" film. But slow does not equal boring. Slow is not tedious unless it is uninteresting. Every moment of this film moves the story along. It has suspense and realistic, adult action; it has convincing characters and a human story; it is based on a set of real, fascinating, and still-important historical circumstances.
To all this, add the beautiful cinematography in authentic Provençal locales. What's not to like?
A Superior and Thoughtfull Thriller
2009-03-23 - I note that another reviewer has complained that this film is slow and compared to the normal thrillers which depend on car crashes, explosions and impossible feats of human agilty I expect it is. It is also a very good film which whilst being entertaining also makes you think. Some people have seen it as anti Catholic, but it is true that elements within the Catholic Church were pro Nazi and did help war criminal escape justice not only in France but in many other countries.
Michael Caine is outstanding as an aging French war criminal who forty years after the end of the world is finally facing justice of a sort. Caine plays Pierre Brossard a minor French war criminal who was responsable for the murder of seven French Jews. I say minor only because others murdered many thousands more and it is clear from this film that others did worse and continued to prosper in post war France.
Brossard has been hidden for years with the aid of the Catholic Church but it appears that a Jewish group has tracked him down and is planning his murder. Unknown to Brossard the Jewish group is a ruse and the real people out to kill him are his former allies in the French establishment and police for whom he has become a liabilty.
At the same time a judge (Tilda Swinton) and a Gendarmerie Colonel (Jeremy Northam) are trying to find him before the killers do.
It is Caine's skill as an actor which allows us to be repulsed by Brossard, he is a coward and a bully, whilst at the same time feeling sympathy for him, he is a frightened old man betrayed by his friends.
Frank Finlay and Edward Petherbridge are also very good in smaller supporting roles.
The fiqure of Brossard was inspired by Paul Touvier who in 1994 was sentenced to life imprisonment after being sheltered by the Catholic Church for years.
All in all a superior and thoughtfull thriller
