‘Operation Finale,’ with Ben Kingsley as Nazi monster, is all too conventional
Although it has its merits, “Operation Finale” — which recounts the 1960 extraction of Adolf Eichmann from Argentina and his delivery to Jerusalem to stand trial — fails to measure up to the deep historical impact of the events it depicts. The Nazi monster Eichmann inspired Hannah Arendt’s epochal essay on the banality of evil, but the movie gives him the genre-film treatment.
The film’s central figure, in the sense that he gets more camera time than Eichmann, is Peter Malkin (Oscar Isaac), a real-life member of the crew of Israeli agents who grabbed Eichmann (Ben Kingsley) from a suburb of Buenos Aires and put him on an El Al flight.