In Costa-Gavras's political melodrama, Jessica Lange stars as a lawyer who defends her blue-collar Hungarian father (Armin Mueller-Stahl) from a charge of being the leader of an SS-run death squad during the Second World War. Courtroom battles generally make riveting viewing and this is no exception. We are kept on a knife-edge of suspense as we wonder if the now kindly veteran could have been a hideous monster in his past. The film raises more questions than it answers and Costa-Gavras's direction is perhaps a little too detached, but the intensity of Lange and Mueller-Stahl more than makes amends.

Halliwell's Film Guide

An effectively melodramatic courtroom drama, but no more than that, despite winning the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 1990.