The Statement (2003)

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Michael Caine plays a Frenchman, Pierre Broussard, who collaborated with the Nazis during the war in "The Statement" from 2002. He is now an old man and in hiding, using another name, as he was arrested after the war and managed to escape. He is accused of killing 7 Jews, and this is shown in flashback. Now he's been hunted by two groups: vigilantes who intend to execute him, and the law, led by a judge (Tilda Swinton) and her associate (Jeremy Northam) who seek justice.Broussard, a devout Catholic wanders from one Catholic abbey or monastery to another seeking refuge; he also receives money from yet another group, fellow collaborators, I think. When they find out he's being hunted, no one wants anything to do with him, and he winds up staying with his wife (Charlotte Rampling) who hates him. Then he's on the run again, in ill health and finding it more and more difficult to find people who will help him.Michael Caine is excellent in this role of a frightened, pathetic old man who is constantly praying and wants to die in a state of grace. His patron saint is St. Christopher - I'm not sure when the book this is based on was written, but I thought St. Christopher had been kind of defrocked or something. Wrong saint.Tilda Swinton and Jeremy Northam have supporting roles and not much to do in them. Alan Bates, Ciaran Hinds, and William Hutt are also part of the film. The scenery is beautiful.This movie could have been much better. First of all, it was a little confusing; secondly, there was a lot of talk about this Chevaliers group, but I don't think anyone ever came out and said what they were about. In the end, I felt like it was a superficial telling of this story.Someone here mentioned a newspaper review complained because no one in the film spoke with a French accent. This is mentioned in practically every movie set in another country by someone, but this is the first time I've heard a newspaper reviewer mention it. You don't need an accent; these people are speaking their own language, not English with an accent. How come no one questioned it in Ben Hur? Do theater-goers insist that Chekov be done with a Russian accent and that in A Doll's House the actors use Swedish accents? Is Hamlet performed with Danish accents? Why is this so hard to grasp that a newspaper reviewer would mention it? I'd love to know who they're hiring these days.Anyway, this movie was a lost opportunity by director Norman Jewison. It's just not as good as it could have been.

Wow! I don't recall reading such a wide spread of ratings/comments on any other movie.I've seen "The Statement" only on TV, beginning very recently. Michael Caine once again has done an outstanding job in his role as a French military or police collaborator in Nazi-occupied Vichi France during WWII. In modern times, as a sick, old man, he has suddenly become a target for capture or execution by a wide range of factions.I thought it was an interesting storyline and well acted by all concerned. It does step on a number of toes, particularly a segment of the Catholic Church in France and high-ranking members of the modern French government who have risen to power in spite of their previous roles in the Vichi government. That shouldn't be a reason to trash the movie if it's based on fact, and no one seems to suggest otherwise.So, this is somewhat of a friendly rebuttal to what others have written.So what if Michael Caine doesn't have a French accent? The movie got blasted for that, but I'm suggesting "who cares?" It's still a nice movie. I don't think Sean Connery's Scottish accent interfered with his being the Russian captain in "The Hunt for Red October." However, Harrison Ford's trying to fake a Russian accent in "K-19--The Widowmaker" did tend to interfere with the story line.Some have said this is just another rewrite of history to make it seem as if WWII was all about the Jews. And Caine's character "only" murdered 12 Jews, as if "what's the fuss all about?" Obviously, the movie is not just about the war being about Jews. I don't think the Japanese had Jews on their mind when they attacked Pearl Harbor to bring the U.S. into the war. Nor was Hitler focusing on Jews when he invaded Poland, France, the Soviet Union, other nations and firebombed the U.K.Nevertheless, Hitler did make an all-out effort to murder seven million Jews as his "Final Solution" to exterminate all of them, especially after they had been almost starved to death as slave labor to support his war effort. This is a fact that shouldn't be overlooked.If I understand this storyline correctly, Caine's character, Pierre, was a Frenchman who became a Nazi collaborator in Vichi France. He and other collaborators began to round-up Jews and murder them even before the Nazis told them to. The "handful" that he directly murdered was among almost 80,000 others who met the same fate in his district of France. That was recognized at the end of the movie, as well as the memorial at the wall of the town in France where Pierre murdered those Jews.After the war, he was captured for trial but escaped. While he was in hiding, he was given a full pardon by the president of France, supposedly through the influence of the Catholic church and friendly high members of the French government who also had a hidden Vichi past.But, now as an old and sick man, Pierre's problems began anew when the World Court enacted the "Crimes Against Humanity" laws. That made him a high-profile fugitive again for a number of reasons at many levels made clear in the film.That's the focus of the movie. The time is the present. Pierre was trying to avoid getting caught and turned to old friends in the church and the government for help. People get killed who get in the way. You won't find James Bond style constant action here, that others seem to think is lacking. But I think it provides an interesting perspective and is well worth watching.

the best acting was between Charlotte Rampling and Michael Caine, but Tilda Swinton does quiet well also.Perfectly paced, tense throughout, full of no-sympathy for Michael Caine nor all the priests who are helping him. Tilda's role is too stereotyped, but she acts so well it doesn't matter. Northam is something of a throw-in just to have another good character, same as Alan Bates. Caine is superb as the man with the twisted Catholic conscience who thinks he can do immense evil and then confess away hell. There was somewhat too much of the everybody-finds-everybody stuff, and the guys who were killed by Caine were too stupid for words, and that was the only false part of the movie.

After the Nazi's were driven out of France, those who had collaborated were mostly rounded up and punished – many by death. However some escaped and were hidden, while others rose in power within the new regime. Pierre Brossard is one of the former and continues to live in fear, protected from those that would avenge his victims by his friends within the Catholic Church. However a close encounter shows that some group is closing in on him, meanwhile political pressure from Judge Livi and Colonel Roux's investigation into his whereabouts mean that he is quickly running out of friends willing to shelter him.It is difficult to know how to approach this film because it itself doesn't seem too sure of what it is trying to do. Is it a drama looking at the idea of fleeing war criminals? Is it a chase movie? Is it a character piece looking at Brossard? It is never clear because it does do some elements of each but it doesn't really do anything that well and I, as a viewer, was a bit confused about what I was supposed to feel or think during it. The story itself is OK, reasonably engaging but not having anything of interest to it. As a chase film I was interested and the themes helped it seem more than the sum of its parts but not in reality. The motivations of the characters are never that well developed; the Livi/Roux parts are dull and quite routine although the sections with Brossard are more interesting.It is a shame then that the film cannot decide what it wants to do with him – do we feel for him, hate him or just watch him? The film doesn't let us decide this in a good way representing the complex nature of the character, but rather just doesn't push out any ideas one way or another. Caine does well despite this and gives a good character a bit of depth. He is where the film is although he probably benefits from the fact that everyone else is quite ordinary. Swinton and Northam are quite ordinary and their parts of the film just seem put of place and half-cooked. Support from Neville, Bates, Rampling and others just about do the job but add little.Overall this is an OK film but nothing at all more than that. Despite the interesting and complex potential the film just delivers an ordinary chase movie and fails to do anything with the ideas and concepts inherent in it. Caine does well to produce quite a convincing character but he is alone in that, with the material and the rest of the cast failing to do anything that interesting. Not bad but not worth trying to find because it is nowhere near as good as one would have hoped.