Synopsis
The story of Auschwitz's twelfth Sonderkommando — one of the thirteen consecutive "Special Squads" of Jewish prisoners placed by the Nazis in the excruciating moral dilemma of assisting in the extermination of fellow Jews in exchange for a few more months of life.
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Cast
- David ArquetteHoffman
- Velizar BinevMoll
- Michael StuhlbargCohen
- Daniel BenzaliSimon Schlermer
- Allan CordunerNyiszli
- Steve Buscemi'Hesch' Abramowics
- Harvey KeitelSS-Oberscharfuhrer Eric Muhsfeldt
- Natasha LyonneRosa
- Mira SorvinoDina
- Brían F. O'ByrneInterrogator
Recommendations
- 80
TV Guide Magazine
Extremely difficult but worthy film. - 75
USA Today
Grimly claustrophobic movies can make viewers put up a shield, yet Tim Blake Nelson (who directed O) invests this unusual Holocaust drama with dramatic intensity that in no way cheapens its subject matter. - 63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
When the larger question cannot be answered, the lesser one -- "What would you have done?" -- seems beside the point. - 60
Washington Post
Jagged, unrelenting, claustrophobically intimate. - 50
Austin Chronicle
The movie's storyline is not always perfectly clear, seemingly falling into the same murky “grey zone” as everything else. - 50
Washington Post
Nelson certainly passes muster for sincerity but, unfortunately, his movie doesn't have the same clear-cut quality. - 50
Variety
Staccato, Mamet-style dialogue exchanges, breathless pacing and remarkably healthy, well-fed-looking actors create a cumulative sense of artificiality that seriously undercuts the devastating effect clearly being sought. - 50
Miami Herald
It plunges so deep, in fact, that the film winds up bordering on the unwatchable.
