Inspired by a true story, "Walking with the Enemy" relates the horror of the deaths of 500,000 Jews in Hungary in the final year of World War II. The film's focus is on the attempt made by Pinchas Rosenbaum and a close friend to impersonate Nazi officers in order to save Hungarian Jews from certain death.
In the film, Rosenbaum's character is the fictionalized Elek Cohen, whose daring raids while in disguise as a Nazi officer rescued Hungarian Jews in the process of deportation to the death camps. While the film was earnest in the depiction of the brutal killings and mass deportations, the scenes of impersonation were not very credible, especially when Elek would simply show up on the scene and assume command of other Nazi officers.
Another shortcoming of the film was in the depiction of Regent Milos Horthy, on whose watch hundreds of thousands of Jews perished. As played by the actor Ben Kingsley, the filmmakers made Horthy a one-dimensional character, assigning the decision-making process more completely to Ferenc Szalasi, the chairman of the Arrow Cross party.
The historical Milos Horthy required a much more nuanced approach. After Horthy caved in to pressure from the Germans and a puppet government was installed in Hungary, the Germans moved with lightning-fast speed to round up and deport nearly 300,000 Hungarian Jews in less than three months in the spring of 1944. When Horthy finally ordered the deportations to cease one month later, 437,402 Hungarian Jews had been transported to the gas chambers. This sequence of events was radically compressed and far too vague, as depicted in the film.
One of the most interesting characters in the film was that of the Swiss envoy Carl Lutz, who made the courageous attempt to rescue Jews by giving them false Swiss visas. The efforts of Lutz and Rosenbaum were indeed heroic and were well-presented in the film. But the epilogue that moved the action forward to New York in the year 1980 seemed too tidy and romanticized in contrast to the visceral content of the film. "Walking with the Enemy" was nonetheless successful in dramatizing an important yet often untold story of the World War II and the Holocaust.
In the film, Rosenbaum's character is the fictionalized Elek Cohen, whose daring raids while in disguise as a Nazi officer rescued Hungarian Jews in the process of deportation to the death camps. While the film was earnest in the depiction of the brutal killings and mass deportations, the scenes of impersonation were not very credible, especially when Elek would simply show up on the scene and assume command of other Nazi officers.
Another shortcoming of the film was in the depiction of Regent Milos Horthy, on whose watch hundreds of thousands of Jews perished. As played by the actor Ben Kingsley, the filmmakers made Horthy a one-dimensional character, assigning the decision-making process more completely to Ferenc Szalasi, the chairman of the Arrow Cross party.
The historical Milos Horthy required a much more nuanced approach. After Horthy caved in to pressure from the Germans and a puppet government was installed in Hungary, the Germans moved with lightning-fast speed to round up and deport nearly 300,000 Hungarian Jews in less than three months in the spring of 1944. When Horthy finally ordered the deportations to cease one month later, 437,402 Hungarian Jews had been transported to the gas chambers. This sequence of events was radically compressed and far too vague, as depicted in the film.
One of the most interesting characters in the film was that of the Swiss envoy Carl Lutz, who made the courageous attempt to rescue Jews by giving them false Swiss visas. The efforts of Lutz and Rosenbaum were indeed heroic and were well-presented in the film. But the epilogue that moved the action forward to New York in the year 1980 seemed too tidy and romanticized in contrast to the visceral content of the film. "Walking with the Enemy" was nonetheless successful in dramatizing an important yet often untold story of the World War II and the Holocaust.