Years from now film historians may look back at 2002 as the year of Holocaust re-examination with major releases of The Gray Zone and the heavily awarded Polanski work, The Pianist. Adding to the collection is a little seen film by Costa-Gavras entitled Amen. Considering the scale of the unthinkable and horrendous acts perpetrated during the Holocaust, compelling dramatic stories should blossom from the bloody soil of those dark days. Why is it that these three projects fail to work well as films? At best they fall into the bin of mediocrity, and Amen is the weakest of the trio.

There is no denying that the subject matter of Costa-Gavras' Holocaust film is worthy of examination and provides raw material that should be more widely known. Whenever thinking about the Holocaust, questions naturally arise about how this brutal inhumanity could take place. Certainly some high ranking Nazis must not have agreed with the Fuhrer's program of persecution and extinction, and Amen tells the true story of such a man in Jurt Gerstein—an SS lieutenant whose chemistry knowledge is used to create the Zyklon B pellets used in the gas chambers. Believing that he's developed the pellets to prevent typhus outbreaks, Gerstein eventually discovers the horror and sets out to make the world aware of the genocide.

Based largely on Rolf Hochhuth's controversial 1963 play, Der Stellvertrete (The Deputy) that centers primarily on Pope Pius XII's refusal to denounce the German mass murders despite knowing about them, Costa-Gavras retains the criticism of the Catholic Church's inaction. Always eager to pounce upon political points, the director spreads the blame around to other bureaucratic entities as well—the Swiss government, German Protestant leaders, and even a smidgen to the United States. Retaining the original play's protagonist in a pivotal role, Costa-Gavras places Father Riccardo Fontana (Mathieu Kassovitz) as the only person that pays heed to Gerstein's (Ulrich Tukur) horrific tale. Unfortunately, Costa-Gavras doesn't translate the theatrical piece into a cinematic screenplay effectivel—too many "talking heads" scenes, sweeping gestures, methodical timing, and "dramatic" shouting matches all indicate that Amen would work far better on stage than it does on film.

Occasional cinematic shots work well, and reveal a bit about the characters—Gerstein's reaction shot when he first discovers the actual use for his Zyklon B pellets is a nice touch. We've all seen gas chamber horrors from other sources, and the directly wisely avoids overkill with blatant imagery that we can already imagine vividly. Numerous train images that associate the German deportation system with cold machinery fits as visual metaphor, and this draws possible parallels to the overly protected and insulated Pope with his entourage train. Structurally, Costa-Gavras bookends his film with sacrificial suicides that both lead to little consequence in an indifferent world.

Any Holocaust film provides weighty subject matter that compels many to overrate its artistic merit, and Amen provides a perfect example—though its failure (thus far) to find widespread distribution is justified. The mechanical acting and rote camerawork that plays by the numbers creates a strangely detached ordinary film that spends too much time preaching about the evils of bureaucracies and the hopelessness of heroically fighting systems that are only concerned with self preservation. A worthy message and as provocative as any pedantic Oliver Stone political rant, but it's terrain that we've visited before.

At one point Gerstein's wife suggests that her husband should be less serious and spend more time with his family. Costa-Gavras should have taken the same advice when designing his film—more touches of humor and humanity would allow the audience to relate more to the two protagonists, but he keep his distance and hammers home his stereotypical political points. In the same vein as The Grey Zone, this production fails to take cinematic advantage of its material by retaining too much of its original source material—both never connect emotionally. As presently written Amen would work far better as a book or stage play to prevent audiences from gagging on its overt messages.