Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Curt Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

cbleek12 I found this on Hulu, and I am obsessed with movies about WWII (the Holocaust in particular). Armed with my smartphone, I dove in. Initially, I was confused because the director/interviewer jumps into the French Revolution shortly after having some associates of Klaus Barbie describe his childhood. Then these leaders of the Revolution start talking about the betrayal of Jean Moulin. I had to hit pause and check it out on the web. After getting a bit more background, I moved on. I was disgusted when I heard back pedaling from Rene Hardy and Francoise Hemmerle. Ultimately learning that Hardy was framed, and seeing an interview with him towards the end of his life, I did start to pity him. However this Hemmerle woman would chuckle when talking about atrocities of torture then say "oh, I helped I the resistance, then proceeds to refer to the film 'Night & Fog' as "propaganda". This is where the running theme of "oh it was so long ago." This seems to be a running theme with the people who helped this butcher later on. The narrator really doesn't talk much about the Holocaust too much during the film, but focuses on the CIC (American intelligence) utilized Barbie as an informant. Woah, stop the bus! Then what really foxed me was if you Google any of these Americans, not a whisper. The person who drove me insane with his non-answers was a certain Eugene Kolb, who was Barbie's handler. He states that based on his relationship with Barbie, he doesn't believe he needed to use torture to get information out of people. I think that is similar to saying the Holocaust didn't happen. Every word out of his mouth is a contradiction or a back pedal. I knew that the US wanted nothing to do with the Jews until the very end of the war. This disgusts me as a human being. The film moves along with more people who "were just doing their jobs" (much like those who dropped Zyklon B into gas chambers) in the hunt and capture of Klaus Barbie. Turns out, that Barbie was involved in the capture of Che Guevara. The film alludes to this, but that was another topic of my own research. One person who is actually more candid than you would think is Barbie's former bodyguard. He was apprehensive at first, but through his story he tells of how he has to get people to go shopping for him as he was persona non grata in Bolivia. I think he realizes as he is speaking with Maurice that if he tells the truth, it may benefit him. It's a bit of a buildup, but watching him break is rather interesting. Well, as most know, there comes a point Barbie needs a lawyer at his trial. This lawyer is Jaques Verges, a well known defender of terrorists from Palestine and Algeria, and also a cohort of the leaders of the Khmer Rouge (this I learned more about from another film, Terror's Advocate). He did what he did more because he wanted France to acknowledge what they did to the French in Lyon and in Algeria. This is touched on, but never fully explained. The jury to me is still out on him, only because there is logic behind his intentions, even though I don't agree with him politically, or on a level of humanity. I won't ruin the end, but this four hour documentary is well worth the watch. I will say that it would be wise to get caught up on the French Resistance a little beforehand. Because I was so interested, I purchased The Sorrow and the Pity, so stay tuned for that review!

Michael Neumann Marcel Ophuls' mammoth four-and-one-half hour-long portrait of Gestapo commandant Klaus Barbie, the notorious Butcher of Lyon, is more than just a biography of another Nazi mass murderer. The film also provides a meticulous study of the forces which allowed him to survive for so long, from wartime anti-Semitism to post-war Communist paranoia to a prevailing what's-done-is-done attitude of retroactive amnesia. Ophuls is not so complacent, and makes no apologies for his sometimes confrontational approach to the subject. In his mind those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, and the sheer volume of verbal testimony, from enemies and friends alike, is only the director's way of ensuring we neither forgive nor forget. The scope of the film is vast, covering over forty years and spanning several continents, but the scale is intimate: one voice, one detail at a time, making it an exhaustive but hardly exhausting account of one monstrous but admittedly small cog in an evil machine, pieces of which are still well-oiled and operating even today.

classickai I had been considering renting this documentary from my video store for some time now, but I am glad I happened to notice it at the video section in my local Library. I only wish I hadn't bothered to watch it at all...This documentary film is virtually incomprehensible to a viewer without specific knowledge of the background to Klaus Barbie and the situation in Lyons, France, during the war. Several rambling interviews are pieced together without much, if any, explanation of the figures being discussed.From the other reviews I've read here and elsewhere, apparently the film becomes "better" near the end. I won't bother to find out for myself whether that is true or not.(To those brave enough to wade through the entire documentary, I have one tip: Watch the subtitled sections at double-speed -- it'll save you time.)

Robert J. Maxwell What an infuriating documentary. Actually, as I write this, it has been almost exactly ten months since Al Qaida flew two passenger jets into the World Trade Center. A shocking event which killed more than two thousand innocent people and forever altered the skyline I admired so much as a kid. I wondered at the time if any entrepreneurs would have the chutzpah to somehow turn this appalling thing into a marketing gimmick and concluded that no one would. But I was wrong. Six months after the fact, ads began cropping up for medals made out of the actual steel frames of the collapsed towers. Little by little, other somber commercials appeared. Some brokerage firm now has TV commercials featuring real-life, actual SURVIVORS of the tragic WORLD TRADE CENTER catasrophe! The survivors, their pockets stuffed full of cash, face the camera and tell us of their experiences, ending with the conclusion that the best way to fight terrorism is to go right on working and to invest with Salomon Smith Barney or whomever. I'm afraid "Hotel Terminus" generates the same feeling, a mixture of anger and disgust. The deportation, imprisonment, and murder of Jews and other minorities is far too horrifying an historical fact to serve as a vehicle for such an on-screen display of self righteousness. Ophuls did a superb job in "The Sorrow and the Pity," mainly by letting the participants and the newsreels speak for themselves about a situation filled with ambiguities. And how eloquent those sources were! Here, we get way too much of Marcel Ophuls telling us what we're supposed to be thinking and feeling, and about a situation in which good and evil were relatively clear cut. It isn't that his self display fails to be engaging. He's a good performer. Searching for an unwilling interviewee, he wanders through the guy's garden patch, lifting cabbage leaves and asking, "Are you under here?" And he does a splendid reenactment of a telephone call to another prospective interviewee, playing both parts. Those participant who agreed to be interviewed do a pretty good job of hanging themselves, by the way. One of them comes up with something like, "Oh, yes, Barbie wasn't a bad fellow. He loved his dog." (No kidding.) It would have been fine if Ophuls had left it at that, although a viewer might understandably wonder how many snippets of conversation had been edited out, and what they consisted of. Weren't there any good guys at all? Can an entire population be so stupid and unfeeling? And Ophuls ridicules on camera those witnesses were were unwilling to speak to him about the carryings on that they clearly feel guilty about, or at least ashamed of, because, as they frequently argue, it all happened so long ago. What does Ophuls expect of them? That they should "come forward" like guests on Oprah Winfrey? If they could ablate their memories as easily as Ophuls can edit his film, they would surely do it.One scene is especially irritating. On camera Ophuls visits a house or hotel that Barbi presumably once lived in. The proprietor emerges and begins to speak to Ophuls. The only language he knows is French. (Ophuls is equally good in French, German, and English.) As Ophuls begins to throw him some change-ups, though, the proprietor begins to back off, saying he'd rather not talk anymore. Ophuls then begins shouting accusations at the guy -- in ENGLISH. The guy is backing dumbly away, with occasional protests, while Ophuls screams things like, "The reason you don't want to talk is that you KNOW he lived in your house," and so on. Well -- this isn't an interview. This is Marcel Ophuls playing Yaweh for the rolling cameras, for the English-speaking audience.It will be a sad day for the entrepreneurs when all of the participants and witnesses to these events have grown old and died. There will be no one left alive to humiliate and to blame. We'll need to start all over again, with only the historical record providing us with a guidebook about what not to do next.