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The Holocaust is taken to court in the based-on-a-true-story "Denial," a timely but talky courtroom drama.

Rachel Weisz plays Deborah Lipstadt, a Queens-born Emory University professor who studies and has written about the Holocaust and those people who use dubious scholarship to try to say there never were 6 million Jews systematically killed by the Nazis. One of these deniers is David Irving (Timothy Spall), a Hitler-sympathizing crank who in 1996 sued Lipstadt for libel in the United Kingdom — where the burden of proof is on the accused, not the accuser. Lipstadt and her publisher hire hotshot solicitor Anthony Julius (Andrew Scott, from "Sherlock") to mount a defense and a powerful old-school barrister, Richard Rampton (Tom Wilkinson), to argue the case in court.

David Hare's script, based on Lipstadt's memoir of the trial, details Lipstadt's frustration that she won't take the stand, because of her lawyers' contention that doing so gives Irving the oxygen he craves to keep his pro-Nazi lies alive.

Director Mick Jackson, a veteran of TV ("Temple Grandin") and movies ("The Bodyguard"), stages the courtroom scenes in a stodgy fashion, lessening their dramatic kick. Lipstadt's story, of standing up for historical truth against shady manipulators, is more timely than the outdated techniques used to tell it.

'Denial'

Opens Friday, Oct. 21, at area theaters; rated PG-13 for thematic material and brief strong language; 110 minutes.