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The search for justice gets personal in the German drama "The People vs. Fritz Bauer," a real-life legal procedural with a powerhouse performance by German actor Burghart Klaussner.
Bauer, played by Klaussner, was attorney general for the West German state of Hesse — a German Jew returned from exile determined to ferret out ex-Nazis and bring them to justice. He enlists a young staff lawyer (Ronald Zehrfeld) to follow the trail of Bauer's main target: Adolf Eichmann, the architect of Hitler's "Final Solution," hiding out in Argentina.
Bauer, stymied by opposition within his own offices, embarks on a risky and illegal plan to slip the evidence of Eichmann's whereabouts to Israel's spy agency, Mossad.
Director/co-writer Lars Kraume steadily modulates the tension, as Bauer pursues Eichmann while fending off external death threats and internal whispers about his closeted homosexuality. But the movie belongs to Klaussner ("The White Ribbon"), who gives Bauer a bulldog stubbornness and a hint of eccentricity that makes the character indelible.
'The People vs. Fritz Bauer'
Opening Friday, Sept. 9, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas; rated R for some sexual content; in German, with subtitles; 105 minutes.