Anthropoid

Don't be deterred by a title that makes this thrilling little war film sound more like a B-movie about Bigfoot. It derives from Operation Anthropoid, the code name for a Second World War mission undertaken by two Czech resistance fighters in 1941, played by Cillian Murphy and Jamie Dornan (Fifty Shades of Grey). Their objective: to assassinate SS senior group leader Reinhard Heydrich, the third-ranking Reich officer after Hitler and Himmler. He is also the brutal head of the German occupation forces in Czechoslovakia and the architect of Hitler's "Final Solution". Murphy and Dornan are in action mode as the would-be assassins under the direction of British film-maker Sean Ellis, chronicling the before, during and brutal aftermath of their bid to kill Heydrich. The ubiquitous Toby Jones also appears and if, at times, one gets the feeling that it may have been more appropriate to cast Czech actors, subtitled, in place of the bigger names, this remains a sweatily gripping thriller with a rousing finale.