Viggo Mortensen Movie:

Editorial Review:
Entitling a film Good is a risky proposition. After all, what if it isn’t? Unfortunately, director Vicente Amorim’s 2008 work falls short of capitalizing on a very promising premise: namely, that many Nazis weren’t fanatics but rather were decent citizens, "good" Germans who found themselves swept up in a tsunami of evil that drowned virtually everything in its path. John Halder is such a man. As portrayed by Viggo Mortensen (who channels British actor David McCallum so completely, right down to his hair, his glasses, his accent, and his mannerisms, that it’s easy to forget that this is the guy from The Lord of the Rings and A History of Violence), Halder has plenty of problems even before the nascent National Socialist party comes knocking on his door. Having addressed said problems, including a senile mother and a highly neurotic wife, by way of a "controversial" novel that advocates euthanasia in certain circumstances, he finds that his book has attracted the attention of the Nazis (why, the Fuhrer himself has read it!), who are looking for a respected academic like Halder to legitimize their policy of "mercy death on the grounds of humanity"--i.e., eliminating the handicapped and other "unfortunates." By 1938, the reluctant Halder has not only gone along with the Nazi propaganda; he’s even been recruited by the S.S., much to the horror of his therapist and friend Maurice (Jason Isaacs), a Jew who desperately needs help getting out of the country. It’s a terrific set-up. Will Halder help his friend, or is he just a timid pawn unable to resist the iron will of the Party? Can he bear to stand by while helpless innocents suffer under a policy that he himself helped create? The answers, despite some nice touches (like the hallucinations that haunt Halder at certain key moments), are frustratingly elusive. Only once do we actually see him amongst the people whose fate he is to decide; and the finale, in which he witnesses life in a concentration camp, is more confusing than decisive. This is a noble undertaking, but Good is ultimately just so-so. --Sam Graham