Taking place in Germany after WWII, Alexander Fehling stars as Johann Radmann, a young prosecutor. After his most recent prosecution, which he was late for, Radmann comes across a new case to look into. A case regarding a teacher named Charles Schulz, who was in fact, a former Nazi. Schulz had a job in the Nazi forces torturing children and sewing twins together to make them look like they were siamese. Without enough evidence though, and the fact that over the half the population are former Nazis, Radmann cannot do anything to bring Schulz to justice.
However, he is in luck when his boss Fritz Bauer (Gert Voss) has put him in charge of looking over every single file on the troops of the Auschwitz camp, which was the most horrible of all of them. Radmann does a fair amount of research, and is soon on a roll taking in as many former Nazis as possible. He also falls in love with Marlene (Friederike Becht) who designs dresses for a living, and her business picks up thanks to people he knows. However, things get nerve wracking for him when he discovers his father was a Nazi. Radmann is on the verge of discovering whether or not he will be able to bring all the Nazis to justice.
A very interesting view into how things worked in Germany back then. The period theme was perfectly laid out, the acting was accurate, and the whole story was very deep and thorough. But though this was a good lesson in history, it wasn’t exactly the most top-notch in production. Seemed a bit too mundane for me.
(Image: “Labyrinth of Lies” by Source (WP:NFCC#4). Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia.)
