Parky at the Pictures (DVD 24/1/2019)

Opting to devote himself to his teenage children, Pawlikowski remained in Boar's Hill and taught at the National Film School before resuming his career with the poignant Parisian-set ghost story, The Woman in the Fifth (2011). During this period, Pawlikowski also returned to his Warsaw roots, although his Oscar-winning drama, Ida (2013), also owes something to his Oxford sojourn, as it drew on the life of controversial military prosecutor Helena Brus-Wolinska, whom he had met during his student days through her economist husband, Wlodzimierz Brus. However, the characters in Pawlikowski's new film, Cold War, were named after his doctor father and dancer mother and their story owes something to the spirit of their often fractious relationship.

It's 1949 and Wiktor Warski (Tomasz Kot) and Irena Bielecka (Agata Kulesza) are travelling around rural Poland with Lech Kaczmarek (Borys Szyc) to record traditional folk songs and unearth talents for a specialist performance troupe. As peasants sing and play for the reel-to-reel recorder, Wiktor and Irena are enchanted by the variety of music they hear. But Kaczmarek is harder headed and refuses to entertain dialect lyrics, as he drives their van through the snowy countryside. But even he can still have his conscience pricked, as he looks around the ruins of an abandoned church and is taken aback by a frescoed face peering out from a layer of cracked plaster. 

They invite hopefuls to a remote stately home and Zuzanna Lichon (Joanna Kulig), who is most certainly not a simple country girl, persuades another woman to duet with her. Irena sees nothing special in the ambitious blonde, but Wiktor is sufficiently impressed to ask her to sing alone and she charms him with a song about love that she had heard at the movies. As he has Communist Party connections, Kaczmarek runs a background check on Zula and discovers she received a suspended sentence for killing her father. When Wiktor confronts her, however, she insists she merely used a knife to remind him that she was not her mother and that he is still alive. 

Accepted into the troupe, Zula learns how to dance and is driven hard by the sceptical Irena, who also makes the peasant costumes to be worn on stage. But Wiktor is convinced she has a unique energy and is pleased when she lasts the course and finds herself performing in Warsaw in 1951. Such is the success of the show that Wiktor and Irena are asked by a government minister (Adam Ferency) to add songs about land reform, the Party hierarchy and world peace to the repertoire. But, while Irena is dead against such propagandising, Kaczmarek is very much in favour, as he knows they could be invited to perform in capitals across the Soviet bloc. 

Thus, at their next concert, a large portrait of Joseph Stalin is unfurled behind the female choir and Irena leaves the auditorium in disgust. As the conductor, Wiktor decides to accept the inevitable. Yet, when he becomes Zula's lover and she informs him that she is spying on him for Kaczmarek, he is powerless to walk away. Indeed, when she throws herself in the lake in protest at his bourgeois petulance, he returns to see her floating in the sun-kissed water and gazes into her eyes, as she dries out on the bank.

In 1952, the Mazurek company (now without Irena) is invited to East Berlin and Kaczmarek reminds everyone on the train that the city is on the border between the socialist and imperialist worlds. He also points out that, even though the GDR is now part of their family of nations, its citizens are still Germans and good Poles would do well to remember the difference. Meeting up in the toilet, Wiktor tells Zula that he has made plans to defect to the West and gives her a map showing her where they are to meet after the show. However, while he waits in the cold near the checkpoint, Zula loses her nerve, as she fears becoming a nobody in a foreign land and she remains with Kaczmarek, as he fraternises with his hosts. 

Two years later, Wiktor is playing piano with a jazz band at L'Elipse in Paris. After a gig, he waits at a backstreet café for Zula to meet him. She has slipped away from the hotel while on tour and they only have a few minutes together before she has to return. As they walk, Zula confesses that she didn't escape because she felt she lacked the talent to make it abroad and Wiktor is dismayed by her timidity. They embrace before she rushes off into the night and Wiktor returns to the apartment he shares with Juliette (Jeanne Balibar), who asks if he has been whoring before rolling over to sleep. 

When Mazurek appear in Yugoslavia in 1955, Wiktor obtains a visa to see them. He is greeted outside the theatre in Split by Kaczmarek, who offers him a seat in his VIP box. But Wiktor declines and fixes his eyes on Zula throughout the performance. She spots him during a dance routine and slightly loses her timing. However, he is bundled away by Yugoslav agents during the interval and deposited on a train back to the West. Zula tries to suppress her anxiety when she notices his empty seat and closes her eyes, as she feels the emotion of the song about lost love.

Back in Paris, Wiktor begins composing scores for film director Michel (Cédric Kahn) and he is working on a thriller scene when Zula arrives at the studio in 1957. They become lovers and take a romantic trip along the Seine on a Bateau Mouche, even though she has married a Sicilian and left Poland legally. She moves into a garret room and sings `I Loves You, Porgy' at L'Eclipse. Yet they still dance to `Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby' and have Billie Holiday's `The Man I Love' playing in the background as they forge a new life together. 

Moreover, Zula resents the fact that Jeanne has translated the lyrics of her signature song. She confronts her at a party and snarkily insists that Poland is a nicer place to live than France. Moreover, she takes exception to Wiktor telling Michel her life story and embellishing it with details about dancing for Stalin in the Kremlin and marrying an Italian duke. Grabbing a bottle, Zula hides away in the bathroom until Wiktor tells her they are going to the club. While he drinks at the bar, she bops with various men to `Rock Around the Clock' and Wiktor has to catch her when she falls backwards off the bar. 

She complains that he has changed when he dumps her on the bed, but she swears she still loves him. Yet, when he arranges for her to record an album, Zula sulks at the microphone and accuses him of helping her for his own ends. Thus, when he presents her with a copy of the disc on their way home from a soirée at Michel's, she tosses it into a fountain and he slaps her face when she says she would rather sleep with a confident Frenchman than a pathetic artist in exile. Zula returns to Poland and, when Wiktor applies to follow her, he is told by the consul (Adam Woronowicz) that he is persona non grata and will only be considered for repatriation if he informs on some of his fellow émigrés. 

Having walked back across the border, Wiktor is sent to a gulag and, in 1959, Zula gets permission to visit him. She bribes a guard so they can be alone and they kiss after he jokes that he has been accused of spying for the British. When she vows to get him released, Wiktor tells her to marry a steady guy and, by the time he gets out in 1964, Zula has had a child with Koczmarek and is performing in a black wig with a Polish mariachi band. He sympathises that Wiktor's hands have been too badly damaged in custody to continue his playing career, but he suggests re-recording the Paris album in Polish to boost Zula's fortunes. Staggering off the stage, she takes refuge in the bathroom and begs Wiktor to get her out of the country for good. 

They take a bus to a stop beneath a tree at a rustic crossroads and walk to the abandoned church with the peeping fresco. Kneeling before the altar, they light a candle, lay out a row of pills and exchange marriage vows. Having swallowed the tablets, they hold hands on the bench beneath the tree before Zula suggests they cross to the other side, as the view will be better. 

Dedicated to the parents who couldn't live with or without each other and who died in 1989 before the Berlin Wall came down, this irresistible drama demonstrates once again that Pawlikowski is the master of economical and elliptical intensity - hence his Oscar nomination for Best Director (as well as Best Foreign Film and Cinematography). The story might span 15 years, but it flies past, as Zula and Wiktor conspire to keep each other apart, as much as the political systems under which they find themselves living. Joanna Kulig and Tomasz Kot are exceptional in the leads and they are ably supported by Agata Kulesza as the principled musicologist and Borys Szyc as the cynical apparatchik.

There are echoes of Martin Scorsese's New York, New York (1977) in the script Pawlikowski wrote with Janusz Glowacki and Piotr Borkowski. But this kind of plotline has been frequently retooled since the advent of the talkies and it is no less truthful for its familiarity. After all, troupes like Mazowsze continue to fly the folk flag in democratic Poland. The ensemble routines are impeccably staged and Katarzyna Sobanska and Marcel Slawinski's production design is as sublime as it was in Ida. Jaroslav Kaminski's editing is equally assured, while the monochrome Academy ratio photography of Lukasz Zal (this time operating without Ryszard Lenczewski) is more fluent and redolent of Polish and French cinema in the 1950s and 60s. 

Indeed, the shot of Kulig floating on the water is simply one of the most beautiful images in any film in the last 20 years. So, while this may not be Pawlikowski's most emotionally demanding picture, it's perhaps his most visually striking and one can only await his adaptation of Emmanuele Carrère's novelised biography of Eduard Limonov (with its spoiler alert subtitle, `The Outrageous Adventures of the Radical Soviet Poet Who Became a Bum in New York, a Sensation in France, and a Political Antihero in Russia') with keen anticipation.

Having made his global reputation with the uncompromising gangster drama, Gomorrah (2008), Italian director Matteo Garrone has explored the allure of transient celebrity in Reality (2012) and made his English-language debut with the folk triptych, Tale of Tales (2015). However, he returns to the effects that crime can have on ordinary people in Dogman, a demoralising story rooted in fact that is set in the same rundown coastal town of Castel Volturno that also provided the backdrop for The Embalmer (2003), a simmering neo-noir centring on a diminutive taxidermist, his new assistant and a wealthy femme fatale. 

Marcello (Marcello Fonte) runs a dog-grooming parlour in a southern Italian holiday resort that has seen better days. Devoted to his nine year-old daughter, Alida (Alida Baldari Calabria), he can soothe the most savage canine breast. But Alida's mother (Laura Pizzirani) has long lost patience with him and the fact that he deals cocaine on the sly to keep cash coming into his coffers. One of his best customers is Simone (Edoardo Pesce), a hulking palooka who consistently throws his weight around and drives the local bartender crazy by smashing up video games whenever he loses. However, Marcello seems convinced that he can tame Simone in the same way he can pacify the most ferociously snarling hound.

Away from his sleazier activities, Marcello enters poodle shows and enjoys sharing his prizes with Alida. He longs to take her on an exotic holiday and imagines them diving down to swim with the fishes. But his reality is being coerced into using his van as a getaway vehicle for Simone and his equally thuggish mate, who appals Marcello by putting a yapping Chihuahua in the freezer of the house they are burgling to prevent it from giving them away. Having dropped the pair off in town, Marcello returns to the scene of the crime to shin a drainpipe and rescue the dog before it freezes to death. 

The members of Marcello's five-a-side football team want to bump Simone off after he gets into an argument and breaks someone's nose. But Marcello remains loyal to him, even after Simone drags him off to get a fresh supply of coke and winds up brawling with a couple of pushers (Mirko Frezza and Marco Perfetti). He also tags along when Simone goes clubbing and allows himself to be matched up with a girl on the dance floor wearing an angel costume (Miriam Piatano). Moreover, when Simone is wounded in the shoulder on leaving the club (by the assassins hired by Franco and his cronies), Marcello manages to get him on to the back of his motorbike and takes him home to his mother (Nunzia Schiano), who despairs of Simone's antics and rips open his bag of cocaine. As Simone hugs her to calm her down, Marcello drops to his knees and scoops up the white powder to please his friend before removing the bullet. 

Marcello tries to draw a line when Simone demands the keys to the parlour so he can break into the next door pawn shop owned by Franco (Adamo Dionisi). But he is bullied into submission and keeps looking guiltily at Franco during their football session. Next morning, he returns from walking his dog to find the police crawling over Franco's store and an inspector (Aniello Arena) arrests him for being an accessory to the break-in. He warns Marcello that everyone knows he's Simone's pal and offers him a lighter sentence if he squeals on him. Torn between protecting his friend and stopping Alida from learning what a fool he's been, Marcello makes his decision and he is shown wandering along a corridor lined with menacing old lags, as he tries his find his prison cell. 

One year later, Marcello returns to the beachside shop and receives a hostile welcome from former friends who feel he has betrayed them. Unfortunately, the scene is witnessed by Alida, who has come to reunite Marcello with his own dog, Jack. He peers through the blinds, as Franco bangs on the door and Alida looks back in bemusement, as she's led away by her mother. Moreover, he's barred from the trattoria where he used to eat with his football friends. But Marcello tries to return to normal and starts boarding dogs in his basement. 

However, he is determined that Simone is going to pay him the €10,000 he owes him from the robbery and is furious when he gets fobbed off and threatened that he will suffer if he keeps pestering. But he quickly comes to regret bashing Simone's motorcycle with an iron bar, as he comes to the parlour and beats the living daylights out of him before hauling him outside in front of his neighbours to have his bloodied face pressed against the bike's dented red metalwork. Even the watching Franco feels a pang of pity, but Marcello refuses to buckle and makes light of the cuts and bruises on his face to take Alida on a scuba diving excursion off the coast. He enjoys a moment of respite on the deck at dusk, as his daughter rests her head on his shoulder at the end of a perfect day. But he knows that he is going to have to deal with Simone or live the rest of his life in fear. 

Venturing into the garage where Simone's bike is being repaired, he offers him a sample of a new batch of cocaine. He convinces Simone that they can overpower the couriers and steal a big enough supply to disappear from this godforsaken backwater and make a fresh start. However, Simone is reluctant to hide in a dog cage and Marcello has to explain that no one will think of searching there and that he can pounce without anyone knowing he's there. Once he has Simone in the cage, however, Marcello locks it and asks how he likes to be trapped. 

Seething with rage, Simone begins kicking at the cage door and manages to get his head out, only for Marcello to knock him unconscious. When he wakes, he has a chain around his neck that is attached to a restraining hook on the wall. Marcello tries to staunch the bleeding from a gash on Simone's skull, but he gets too close and the brute puts him in a headlock. Struggling for breath, Marcello reaches the foot control to lower the bench on which Simone is sitting and he is able to wriggle free and watch his tormentor choke to death. 

Bundling Simone into his van, Marcello drives to the dunes and sets light to the sack containing the corpse. However, he hears his pals playing football and rushes back to douse the flames and carry the body to the all-weather pitch to show his neighbours that he has slain the giant. But there's nobody there and Marcello is left with the cadaver on the edge of the children's playground, as he looks back at the decrepit beachfront buildings and wonders what to do next. 

Seeking to recast the story of the Dogman of Magliana, near Rome, as a latterday Western, Garrone and production designer Dimitri Capuani struck gold with the desolate Parco del Saraceno in the Pinetamare district of Castel Volturno. Resembling the main street of a frontier town, the row of buildings housing Marcello's dog parlour cruelly expose him to the slings and arrows hurled by fate in the form of the lumbering Simone. His situation could be likened to that of a little man being repeatedly ground down by a state that cares only for its own concerns. But this appears to be a simple fable about the code of honour among thieves, misplaced trust, the demise of machismo and owning the decisions one makes in an effort to survive. 

These themes may not coalesce into a particularly deep message, but Garrone doesn't seem to be in the mood to delve far beneath the surface or maintain the plausibility of the increasingly unhinged action. Consequently, we learn little about Marcello's prior life or how he came to father a child. His friendship with Simone also remains a mystery, as it puts a menacing spin on the dynamic between Lenny and George in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. Indeed, with his rasping voice and seedy demeanour, Marcello recalls Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), who tried to help Joe Buck (Jon Voigh) become a gigolo in John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy (1969), which became the first X-rated film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Somewhat surprisingly, given its unflinching violence, this has been given a 15 certificate. But the two films share a sense of desperation and an insight into mismatched friendships. 

Although little is required of Edoardo Pesce other than to be gargantuan and irrational, he contributes a sociopathic presence that evokes Tale of Tales in his resemblance to a fairytale ogre threatening the villagers. Moreover, he makes an imposing foil for Marcello Fonte, whose puppyishly naive need to please everyone extends to feeding Jack pasta from his own fork. However, as Nicolai Brüel's colour-muting camera prowls in his wake, it becomes clear that Marcello is no angel himself. After all, he deals drugs and is happy to take a cut of Simone's ill-gotten gains (albeit to treat his beloved daughter). Like the unpopular sheriff who has cleared up the Wild West town, however, his future is left uncertain at the fadeout.

Since making a solid start to his career with Tattoo (2002) and The Family Jewels (2003), Stuttgart-born Robert Schwentke has been making modest waves in Hollywood with such workaday outings as Flightplan (2005), The Time Traveler's Wife (2009), RED (2010) and R.I,P,D. (2013), as well as the final two entries in the Divergent Series, Insurgent (2015) and Allegiant (2016). In returning to his native Germany for The Captain, however, Schwentke had made a bold political and stylistic statement that is bound to spark debate about the relationship between authority and latent evil. 

It's April 1945 and the end of the Second World War is still two weeks away when army deserter Willi Herold (Max Hubacher) flees from a jeep posse led by the sadistic Captain Junker (Alexander Fehling). Hiding under a protruding root in the woods, the 19 year-old corporal evades capture and spends the night in a deserted railway station with a skeletal straggler who had staggered along the tracks. He is pitchforked to death by farmers when the pair are caught stealing eggs from a barn and Herold stumbles on alone across the frozen fields. 

Eventually, he finds an abandoned car next to a small bonfire of official documents. On the backseat, Herold finds a basket of apples and a suitcase containing a pristine Luftwaffe captain's uniform. Changing into the warm, dry clothes, he looks at himself in the car mirror and likes what he sees. While juggling apples, he sings a song about Fortune smiling on him and practices giving out orders while sporting a monocle. But he falls silent when he sees the bedraggled Private Freytag (Milan Peschel) wandering towards him. He insists that he lost his unit during heavy fighting and helps Herold get the staff car out of a rut. Intrigued by the stranger's reaction to his uniform and his assumption that he has power, Herold allows Freytag to become his chauffeur and they drive to the nearest town to find an inn. 

The locals are initially indifferent to the captain, as they have long lost any respect or fear. But their demeanour changes when Herold reveals that he is on a special mission to discover what is happening behind the lines and has the authority to reimburse them for all items stolen by looters. Having savoured a roast dinner, Herold retires to his room. However, the innkeeper and his torch-brandishing friends drag a looter into the street beneath his window and demand justice. Steeling himself to sustain the deception, Herold puts a single bullet into the kneeling soldier's skull and returns to his room, where Freytag helps him off with his jacket and promises to wake him early so that they can make a swift getaway. 

Driving through the desolate countryside, the duo fetch up at a remote farm, where they hear the sound of music playing on the radio. Inside, they find a trio of deserters intimidating a farmer (Jörn Hentschel) and his wife (Rike Eckermann). But, even though Kipinski (Frederick Lau) suspects Herold is an impostor because his uniform trousers are such a poor fit, he decides to throw in his lot with the officer and asks to become attached to his unit. Recognising that there is safety in numbers, Herold amends their ID papers and allows another pair pulling an anti-aircraft gun to join their ranks. In order to keep up appearances, he orders them to fire at a plane passing overhead. But he taxes their loyalty when the staff car runs out of petrol and Herold insists on being pulled along by ropes. 

After a few miles, the exhausted Kipinski is about to challenge Herold's authority when a military police patrol rolls up and Captain Josef Sichner (Sascha Alexander Gersak) charges the unit with being deserters. Remaining in the car to gather his thoughts, Herold challenges Sichner's right to examine the papers of a brother officer and convinces him that he is on a mission approved by the Führer himself. Kipinski suppresses a smile at how bullishly Herold is maintaining his deception. But he faces a sterner test when Junker halts the convoy at a checkpoint and climbs into the back of the car and orders it to proceed to the nearby detainment camp. As they drive, Junker asks Herold where they have met before and he bluffs his way through a campaign conversation before Junker warns him that he never forgets a face. 

Junker insists on Herold joining him for a drink and introduces him to the commander of Camp II Aschendorfermoor, Schütte (Bernd Hölscher). He is keen to dispose of the looters and deserters wasting his precious resources and he complains to Herold that he is prevented from court-martialling them by Justice Department pen-pusher, Hansen (Waldemar Kobus). Thinking on his feet, Herold suggests that he might be able to do more than merely mention the problem to Hitler and Junker leaves confident that he has left the matter in good hands. On being shown into the barrack housing the `criminals',  however, Herold recognises men who are every bit as scared as he was when he was running through the woods. He inspects the front rows and allows Kipinksi to bludgeon one deserter and, when he finds a harmonica clasped in his hand, he orders the others to empty their pockets of any valuables. 

As a decent man caught up in a nightmare, Freytag asks Herold if they are doing the right thing. But he shrugs that they are already condemned to die and strides off to have lunch. He is interrupted, however, by Hansen, who asks him to delay further executions until he has spoken to his superiors and established Herold's credentials. Yet, when Hansen phones Dr Thiel, Herold swears that he only killed prisoners who resisted his inspection and Schütte is so impressed by his sang froid that he promises to contact the local Gauleiter to knock Thiel out of the loop and give Herold a free hand to dispense justice as he sees fit. 

Mocking him through his office window, Schütte watches Hansen receive phone confirmation that the Gestapo in Emden has handed jurisdiction to Herold. Turning away, Hansen sees the prisoners digging a mass grave near the perimeter fence and he closes his curtains as the first prisoners are summoned from the barrack. They are forced to sing a marching song, as they cross the compound and climb into the trench. As Herold and Schütte drive to the spot, the anti-aircraft gun is rolled into position and Herold covers his ears and lets out a scream as the deserters are mown down. Schütte orders some of his guards to finish off the wounded and Herold turns to see Freytag walk away in disgust after an officer with an arm in a sling vows to report such inhumanity to the highest authority. 

Angered by Freytag's attitude, Herold orders him to put one wounded prisoner out of his misery by climbing into the trench and walking across the corpses until he reaches him. As the floodlights beam down on the darkened camp, Freytag puts the fellow out of his misery and turns to salute. But, when quicklime is tossed into pit before it's covered over, however, one of the prisoners is still very much alive. Concerned that he will be implicated in the murder of 90 men, Hansen contacts Thiel and steers clear of the celebration dinner that Herold is hosting in the mess hall with Schütte and his wife, Gerda (Britta Hammelstein). 

While the soldiers eat, prisoners Roger (Samuel Finzi) and Schneider (Wolfram Koch) perform an anti-Semitic cabaret before Schütte and the camp brass band join them for a hearty rendition of `Band of Brothers'. This proves to be an ironic choice, as Kipinski picks a fight with one of the guards and the brawl spills outside into the courtyard. Amused by the mayhem, Herold calls Roger to the table and asks why he was arrested. Reluctant to condemn himself, Roger agrees to play a game of hypothetical accusations that starts with Herold admitting that he stole the captain's uniform. Aware that his fate depends on what he says, Roger plays along and confesses to stealing from a fallen comrade. But, while he goes into a panic when Schütte grabs him by the lapels, he joins Schneider in filling his pockets when Herold and Schütte wander off to see what's happening outside. 

They find Kipinski and Schütte's No.2, Brockhoff (Marko Drylich), beating prisoners with their bare fists. Schütte pleads with Herold to restore some order and he binds the hands of the four surviving inmates and orders them to turn and run. Herold guns down one, so that the other three have to pull his corpse behind them, and hands the pistol to Roger. He takes out another fugitive, but Schneider prefers to shoot himself than debase himself. When the revolver jams, Gerda steps forward with her own weapon and the besotted Schütte steadies her hand as she wounds the last man standing, who is gunned down by the rest of the party, as though he was a target in a game. Herold welcomes Roger to his task force and gives Kipinski a glare to remind him who's in charge and how precarious their position really is. 

The next morning, Herold has a tailor take up the hem of his trousers. So, when Schütte asks for a rallying speech before his bicycle patrol goes to round-up any more deserters, Herold addresses the men in his underwear and still manages to sound authoritative. Once again, Freytag struggles to hide his emotions and Herold (who has become fond of him, as his lucky charm) sends him to the mess to compose himself. A slow-motion shot of the Herold Task Force indulging in debauched revelry follows before Schütte returns to find corpses littering the compound. He is about to protest when the RAF bombs the camp and only Herold, Kipinski, Freytag and Roger survive. He promotes them all and invites the others unscathed by the assault to find themselves some uniforms and join the ranks.

In a curious digression, a caption informs us that a single brick post is all that is left of Camp II and Schwentke cuts away from the stark monochrome in which the picture has been filmed to a colour shot of the site today. Just as abruptly, he returns to 1945, as Herold stands in the front of the staff car as it bowls along with the legend `Herold's Express Court' daubed in white paint on the side. Arriving in a sleepy town, he executes the mayor and announces that he has come to restore order. In fact, he throws a riotous party and becomes so enamoured of Erika (Annina Polivka) and Irmgard (Eugenie Anselin) that he puts Kipinksi before a kangaroo court for flirting with them and bringing the Task Force into disrepute. He strips Kipinski naked and guns him down in the street, but not before he reminds Herold that he crept into his soul like the devil and will continue to haunt him. 

Throwing an orgy, Herold ogles Irmgard and Erika as they sing a song about special times being over too quickly. This proves to be the case when the military police raid his headquarters the following morning. Yet, even though he is charged with impersonating an officer, murdering a mayor waving a white flag and organising a massacre, Junker and his fellow prosecutor convince the presiding officer that Herold showed leadership and spirit in the face of defeatism and should be given the opportunity to rejoin the army and fight for the Fatherland. 

Despite giving an enthusiastic salute and vowing to deliver Berlin from the Red Army, Herold uses knotted sheets to escape from his cell window and he scarpers into the woods. Skeletons litter the floor, as he pauses to stare accusingly into the lens before closing captions inform us that the Royal Navy arrested Herold for stealing a loaf of bread on 23 May 1945 and was executed on 14 November 1946, along with six of his accomplices, for the slaughter of around 170 victims. 

Having shown admirable restraint in his depiction of the carnage, Schwentke rather spoils things during the closing credits by ramming home his message in having Herold's crew ride through a modern German town to interrogate some unsuspecting residents going about their daily business. Complicity is a common theme in recent German recreations of the Nazi period and the point is worth reiterating as right-leaning groups start spouting their pernicious views on the migrant crisis. But the decision to shoot in black and white has the effect of distancing the incidents and issues that Schwentke is so keen to highlight. One suspects he took this creative decision to associate Herold's crimes with those of Amon Göth (Ralph Fiennes) in Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993), but the gambit doesn't quite come off. 

The same problem besets the inclusion of the postscript captions, as they serve to emphasise the fact we learn nothing about Willi Herold before he deserted in the spring of 1945. Many German viewers will know that `the Executioner of Ermsland' was a chimney sweep from Saxony who had received an Iron Cross for his courage at Monte Cassino in early 1944. But it wouldn't have harmed the narrative to have added a few background details to the closing summary. Indeed, it would have made Herold's ability to sustain his impersonation at such a tender age all the more remarkable, as there was nothing in his past to suggest that he was capable of either such conniving con-artistry or such steely ruthlessness. 

Impressive though Max Hubacher is in the title role, he is matched by Milan Peschel and Frederick Lau as the flipsides of Herold's coin. Waldemar Kobus and Bernd Hölscher also show well as the rivals at Camp II, with the latter's creepy relationship with Britta Hammelstein (whom he seduced when she was 15) hinting at the under-explored subject of the role that women played in the atrocities perpetrated by the Third Reich. But the emphasis falls firmly on the banality of evil, the corrupting nature of power and the ease with which charlatans can acquire a fanatical (and often lethal) following. 

Marbed with moments of bleak and sometimes cruel surrealism that are counterpointed by Martin Tadsharow consistently unsettling score, the action is photographed in widescreen by Florian Ballhaus with an austere, angular elegance that contrasts with the grinding grimness of Harald Turzer's settings. Given the tone of Schwentke's Stateside features, such refinement comes as something of a surprise. But this would merit its place in an all-nighter programme alongside Oliver Hirschbiegel's Downfall (2004), Max Färberböck's A Woman in Berlin (2008) and Cate Shortland's Lore (2012).

First brought to television as an anime series in 2014, Sui Ishida's acclaimed manga Tokyo Ghoul gets the big-screen, live-action treatment in Kentaro Hagiwara's debut feature of the same name. Full of gore and knowing genre nods to keep the fanboy constituency happy, this Shochiku release is set in a present day in which ghouls pass unnoticed in the ordinary world. However, they tend to keep to their own kind, as whenever they feel the need to partake of human flesh, they develop tentacle-like organs known as `kagune' on their backs. In the original tele-show and its triptych of spin-offs, these transformations provided few challenges to the respective animation units. But Hagiwara is somewhat let down by the effects devised by Tomu Hyakutake and rendered in some decidedly dodgy computer-generated animation. 

Despite the best efforts of the Comission of Counter Ghoul, Tokyoites are still being stalked by ravenous creatures who somehow manage to blend in with the general population. Consequently, bookish student Ken Kaneki (Masataka Kubota) has no idea that the seemingly innocent Rize Kamishiro (Yu Aoi) is less interested in his mind than his flavour when she accepts his invitation for a date. He gets the picture, however, when she sinks her fangs into his shoulder during a romantic nocturnal walk through the park and she stabs her kagune through his abdomen to hold him still while she feeds. But, while he is spared being devoured when a falling girder crushes the red-eyed Rize, he is forced to endure a fate worse than death when he becomes a demi-ghoul after receiving some of Rize's organs during a life-saving operation. 

He gets an inkling of his predicament, however, when he goes for a celebration meal with best pal Hideyoshi Nagachika (Kai Ogasawara) and discovers that normal food tastes vile. As he tries to swallow the contents of his fridge while listening to a ghoul hunter on TV explaining the biology behind his loss of appetite, Ken imagines himself being attacked by Rize and, when he washes his face in the bathroom, he realises that one of his eyes has gone blood red. Staggering into the busy city, Ken smells flesh and promptly falls foul of Nishiki Nishio (Shunya Shiraishi), who accuses him of trespassing in his feeding ground. However, Ken is saved by Touka (Fumika Shimizu), a ghoul waitress who has long had her eyes on Ken and his friends. She despises Rize for stealing her prey and warns Ken to steer clear of Nishiki, who has little time for the Anteiku Code. 

Her boss, Yoshimura (Kunio Marai), is more sympathetic, however, and notes that Ken is finding it difficult to adapt to his new condition. He informs him that coffee can hold hunger pangs at bay, but cautions him that he will need to eat human flesh in order to survive. But Ken can't bring himself to consume the cold cut that Yoshimura provides for him and he vows to continue with his old life. Covering his red eye with a patch, he hooks up with Hide at school, only to find that he has become involved with Nishiki, who recognises Ken from the alleyway. He kills Hide by slamming him into a table. But, just as he is about to take a bite, Ken unleashes his trident kagune and defeats Nishiki in an epic battle. As he licks the blood off Hide's face, however, Ken catches sight of himself in the mirror and sees Rize smirking back at him. 

Ken is rescued from campus by Touka and Renji Yomo (Shuntaro Yanagi), who tidy up the room and take Hide to hospital before taking Ken back to the coffee shop. Yoshimura tells him that he is the only one who can dwell in both human and ghoul realms and offers him a job as a barista so he can learn to cope with his new reality. Here, he meets regular customer Ryoko Fueguchi (Shoko Aida) and her bashful daughter, Hinami (Hiyori Sakurada), who seeks solace in reading, as there are no other ghouls her age for her to befriend. He is also taken to meet Uta (Minosuke Bandô), who creates his ghoul mask, and accompanies Yomo on a body-collecting expedition to a well-known suicide spot.

Meanwhile, CCG agents Kotaro Amon (Nobuyuki Suzuki ) and Kureo Mado (Yo Oizumi) have become convinced that Ward 20 is the centre of Tokyo's ghoul community and are tracing dress fibres and a ring to find out more. Yoshimura realises that they are closing in on Ryoko and offers her sanctuary at the Anteiku until Yomo can find her new lodgings. Ken takes pity on Hinami when he accidentally blunders in on her eating and she feels ashamed of her nature. He also admires Touka, who bravely gobbles down a meal prepared for her by human friend, Yorkio Kosaka (Seika Foruhata), who doesn't suspect she is really a ghoul. So, Ken offers to help Hinami with her reading and to place some coffee beans on her father's grave. However, CCG rookie Ippei Kusaba (Tomoya Moeno) is snooping around the cemetery and reports back to base. Amon joins him at the graveside and digs up a box containing the mask worn by Ryoko's ghoul husband. 

Armed with a quinque (a weapon made from a severed kagune), Amon and Mado corner Ryoko and Hinami when they leave for their new home in Ward 24. Desperate to save her child, who has feasted without killing, Ryoko orders Hinami to run away and she is found Ken. As they hide behind a car, however, they witness Ryoko perish in the driving rain and Ken notes the pleasure that the white-haired Mado took in slaying her. Touka asks permission to exact revenge and attacks Amon and Kusaba after they leave a restaurant (where is seems as though Amon finds human food distasteful). She wears a rabbit mask to protect her identity and succeeds in offing Kusaba before Mado arrives with his quinque to drive her away before she can throttle Amon. He has to witness Kusaba's mother identifying his body and Ken is equally distraught when he learns that Touka has been badly injured. 

Seeking Yoshimura's permission, Ken takes a crash training course with the recovered Touka and a montage shows him gaining in strength and guile after some humiliating beatings. But we also see Mado planning to lure Hinami out of her safe house by using the scent of her mother's severed arm to bring her back to the spot beneath a railway bridge where she succumbed. He follows the child down to the river and warns Amon to keep an eye out for Touka and Ken, who have discovered that Hinami has slipped away. Touka takes on Mado, who is armed with a quinque made from Ryoko's kagune, while Ken overturns Amon's car and bites him in the neck during their tussle because he blames the CCG for demonising ghouls when they should be understood. 

Mado revels in inflicting pain on Touka and is about to finish her off when Hinami grows her kagune and severs his arm. Touka tells her that this is the man who murdered her parents, but she fights the urge to kill and cries when Touka curses Mado for thinking that ghouls have no right to prey on humans when they are their only source of nourishment. She kills him with a flick of her kagune. But Ken is reluctant to take his first life and spares Amon after they come crashing down from a balcony during their showdown. A single tear drops on the dove agent's eye and, when he looks up, he finds he is alone on the upturned body of his car. He finds Mado's body and later lays flowers at his grave (now also wearing an eye patch). But the film ends positively (in a bid to set up a sequel) by showing Hide coming round in hospital and Ken accepting his new family at the coffee shop, with Touka and Himami.

Plunging the audience into the scenario with a cursory explanation that provides little contextualising background, this is one of those films that will delight admirers of Ishida's bestseller and leave newcomers baffle. Novice screenwriter Ichiro Kusuno is too preoccupied with packing in the busy storyline to bother with niceties like character psychology or development arc. Thus, Masataka Kubota goes from quivering wreck to cackling monster without any insight into his shifting mindset other than a sentimental attachment to Hiyori Sakurada because she's also a lonely bookworm. We also get no indication of why the conscience-stricken Nobuyuki Suzuki appears less gung-ho than his boss or why the silver-tressed Yo Oizumi is such a brooding oddball, as he opens his precious attaché cases to unleash the quinques, whose amputated powers are never explained. 

For a first-timer, Kentaro Hagiwara directs the action sequences with plenty of panache, thanks to the contributions of cinematographer Satoru Karasawa, editors Yasuyuki Ozeki and Akira Takeda, and composer Don Davis. But he is less successful in reining in the scenery-gnawing tendencies of some of his players. Kubota is particularly hammy in his opening scenes, while Suzuki lurches between brooding intensity and sadistic ferocity. However, most post-screening discussion will centre on the shoddy CGI, the sudden disappearance of Yu Aoi after Kubota finds a home at the Anteiku, Fumika Shimizu's choice of a bunny mask, and why the citizens of Tokyo are not more terrified of the predators who regard them as items on a walking buffet.