Any story about WWII has the advantage of built-in drama and the disadvantage of our knowing the outcome. Netflix’s Munich: On the Edge does a successful job of recreating the tension between Great Britain and Germany before the non-aggression pact signed by both countries. The fictionalized story has the requisite elements of a thriller with villains, heroes, and one of the world’s infamous butchers, Adolph Hitler (Ulrich Matthes).
Hugh Legat (George Mackay) is the British staffer with PM Neville Chamberlain (a terrific Jeremy Irons), who joins forces with his former German Oxford friend, Paul von Hartmann (a terrific Jannis Niewohner), now a press secretary to the Fuhrer. If the film had concentrated on their convoluted friendship, it would have not even needed to deal with the negotiations—that’s how fraught their interaction is, culminating as it does in Paul’s turncoat turn to assassinate Hitler.
I was more than sufficiently intrigued by the portrait of Chamberlain, a good man except for his unwillingness to see that his pacificism was a danger to the world. When Hitler reneged on the Munich agreement, Chamberlain was ousted, but not without history deciding he actually bought a year for the allies to prepare for a bloody war that brought defeat to Hitler and Germany.
Director Christian Schwochow keeps the suspense with cold-war spy story efficiency and writer Ben Power makes each word count since millions of lives are at stake. The character of Paul best exemplifies the torment of those who passionately want to save the world from a demon but are initially powerless.
Hugh remains typically reserved Brit, an obedient soldier always and a romantic sometimes. The formulaic tension with his wife Pamela (Jessica Brown Findlay in the usually thankless grieving-wife role of this genre) is a waste of time when so many other clashes are more interesting, e.g., Hugh and Chamberlain. Hugh well represents the cautious Brit character, and Chamberlain occupies the feckless stewing that lost considerable lives while the world waited.
But the US stayed out of the fray as well until Pearl Harbor changed everything. Munich: On the Edge depicts a world preparing for war not as the bombastic Michael Bay would have but rather as the thoughtful Steven Spielberg might have.
An exciting gift from Netflix where you learn a bit about history and spend an enjoyable time living it.
Munich: The Edge of War
Director: Christian Schwochow (Bad Banks)
Screenplay: Ben Power from Robert Harris novel
Cast: George MacKay (1917), Jeremy Irons (House of Gucci)
Run Time: 2h 10m
Rating: PG-13
