I saw a preview of Labyrinth of Lies when I was watching some movie on DVD, immediately decided to add it to the list and saw it soon thereafter. Unfortunately Labyrinth of Lies did not live up to my expectations.
Labyrinth of Lies is about a young German prosecutor who voluntarily decides to investigate allegations against a schoolteacher only to uncover more than he expected. Germany is filled with former Nazis! Those Nazis may have committed war crimes! His own family may have been a Nazi party member! No, seriously, he is surprised by all of this. Instead of Labyrinth of Lies, they should have called it Privilege Makes You Blind.
There were Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, but Labyrinth of Lies is more interested in a fictional account that focuses on the internal turmoil of disillusionment with dashes of failed ambitious attempts to create a Nazi hunt thriller involving Mengele. Sorry the 70s are over.
Labyrinth of Lies suffers in the same manner that many American movies about the Civil Rights movement fail. Labyrinth of Lies creates a fictional, white, male and in this case, German, but not Jewish, protagonist untouched by the more important events and characters surrounding them. Labyrinth of Lies actually had a real life prosecutor, Fritz Bauer, who was Jewish, that they could have focused on, and I’m sure the real life counterparts were not as blissfully ignorant as this protagonist. Labyrinth of Lies is a tragic miss. Skip it.
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