Conspiracy 2001
Conspiracy ★★½ 2001 (R)
Another in HBO's long line of excellent movies based on real-life events. This one covers the January, 1942 meeting of high-ranking Nazi SS and civilian government leaders to decide what to do about “the Jewish question.” Led by SS Geneal Reinhard Heydrich (Branagh, in a riveting performance) and set up by SS Col. Adolf Eichmann (Tucci), this conference was conducted like a board meeting, and that's where the power of the movie comes from, because the outcome of the conference was implementation of the “final solution,” the attempted extermination of the Jewish population of Europe. While every man in the room is a villain, they aren't the kind of Nazi villain we're used to. They are bureaucrats who offer administrative and logistical objections, but only token moral dissent (which is dispensed with rather quickly and completely). 96m/C VHS, DVD . Stanley Tucci, Kenneth Branagh, Colin Firth, Barnaby Kay, Ben Daniels, David Threlfall, Jonathan Coy, Brendan Coyle, Ian McNeice, Owen Teale, Nicholas Woodeson, Ewan Stewart, Kevin McNally, Brian Pettifer; D: Frank Pierson; W: Loring Mandel; C: Stephen Goldblatt. CABLE