The Statement (2003)

Best movie of this year hands down!

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Good concept, poorly executed.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

One of the best "Nazi collaborator hunting" movies. It's not about catching a big name for news. It's about every collaborator and every murderer must pay. It's about seeking justice 50 years after the murder. It's about manifesting justice in this world as long as any collaborator is still alive. Instead of simple right and wrong, the script showed different aspects of the collaborator's personality and different faces of the Church. And it explained only with lots of highly placed and powerful confidential help can any war crime criminal get away and hide in plain sight for such a long time. Michael Caine has always been one of my favorite actors. And he turned in one of his best performance here. Even though you want him to get caught, but you can't help feel sorry for him.

The cast list reads like a roll call of many of the great and good among British thespians, all getting a little long in the tooth, it has to be said, but nevertheless doing the business manfully as they always did. So there's Michael Caine, Frank Finlay, Alan Bates, Charlotte Rampling and Tilda Swinton, but the mystery isn't who among the French establishment is protecting a number of ageing Vichy murderers, but what this august group is doing in a film which is sadly little more than a TV film with a bigger budget. Two other big names are involved: Ronald Harwood wrote the screenplay from the novel by Brian Moore, and Norman Jewison directed and producedI suspect this should have remained as a novel. For one thing although the whole shooting match was filmed in France – Nice, Marseill, Avignon, Paris – and the production values are high enough to ensure the French cops look like French cops, it is all rather strange when they talk in impeccably British accents, from the wine maker played by Frank Finlay to Caine's Vichy baddie on the run and Alan Bates French government minister. Sadly, this viewer couldn't get beyond the Britishness of if all which rather made suspending disbelief impossible. I suspect the plot about the the guilty ones in the establishment protecting themselves bumping off those who could identify them and inventing a Jewish group which is apparently out for vengeance to cover their tracks worked a lot, lot better on paper in the novel. An intricate part of the plot is the nasty RC church giving sanctuary to those Vichy killers on the run – well, Caine at least, but the implication is that they did it for many more, and I believe there is a great deal of hard evidence that it did, indeed, happen like that. This is by no means a bad film, and the average of 6/10 given here by IMDb reflects that. It is just that it is all rather misconceived. No masterpiece, then, but worth catching if you happen to see it billed on late-night TV.

After France fell to Germany in 1940 , the Vichy regime was set up under Marshal Petain . In 1943 , the Vichy government created a military force called Milice to carry out the Nazi occupiers . When the war was over many of those involved were prosecuted for war crimes . Some get away . A few rose to power . Pierre Brossard ( Michael Caine ) committed crimes against humanity and collaborated with Nazis in WWII . Today Pierre follows hidden by priests of Catholic Church that sheltered him during fifty years and is being protected by a strange sect called The Chevaliers of St. Marie . But a judge ( Tilda Swinton ) and a colonel ( Jeremy Northam ) are investigating his past . Meanwhile , a mysterious murderous ( Matt Craven) is pursuing Pierre to kill him .This TV movie produced by Canadian television in association with BBC packs suspense , mystery , thrills , action and is quite entertaining . Jewison cast some largely known actors as Michael Caine , his wife well played by Charlote Rampling , the starring duo as Tilda Swinton and Jeremy Northam , and a remarkable support cast as Ciaran Hinds as Inspector Pochon , Alan Bates as Bertier , Frank Finlay as the Comissaire and several others . Atmospheric musical score by Norman Corbeil and appropriate cinematography by Kevin Jewison , director's son . The motion picture is professionally produced and directed by Norman Jewison . He is a prestigious and veteran filmmaker, his greatest film is of course Jesus Christ Superstar . He considers The Hurricane (1999) the last in a trilogy of racial bigotry movies he's realized, the first two being In the Heat of the Night (1967) and A Soldier's Story (1984).The film terminates with an epilogue based on real events , that says the following : ¨At 5:00 am , on June 29, 1944, in Rilleux -La-Pape, France, seven Jews were executed ¨. The movie is dedicated to those seven men and the 77.000 other French Jews who perished under German occupation and the Vichy regime .

Pierre Brossard is a man hiding an ugly past - he collaborated with the Vichy Regime in Nazi occupied France during WWII. This led him to being responsible for the execution on 7 Jews. Now, after years of hiding and living a quiet pious life, his past has caught up with him.One thing that can strike an audience about this film is its relatively quiet nature. Things happen, but they don't always happen fast. There isn't any real "action" and "thrills." However, the movie nonetheless remains engaging, though it is not a conventional revenge thriller movie. It is more about the people involved than the things that they do or did in the past. There are only hints at Brossard's past and not whole flashback sequences showing war crimes. Even as characters travel throughout the film their travel times are even spared quick montages or vast establishing shots. This might make the film seem slow and uneventful, yet there are a few suspense scenes that are, well, just good suspense scenes. Slow, yes, but tense.Also the movie makes an indictment about the violence. Does violence cure violence? Is fighting fire with fire always the right thing to do? It solves somethings, but does it solve everything? The film certainly ends on a hum that leaves the viewer thinking about the subtleties that it drops throughout. --- 8/10Rated R despite minimal violence. Almost any PG-13 action film is significantly more violent.