It's easy to say with hindsight that any one of us would have been against the Nazis had we lived in the Germany of the 1930s, but would it have been quite so clear-cut if toeing the party line brought us career success? That's the nub of CP Taylor's award-winning 1981 play, here opened out for the screen with Viggo Mortensen as a literature professor who privately scorns National Socialism, but is willing to accept the benefits of a few small actions that gradually lift him up the Nazi hierarchy. It's an intriguing dilemma, or it would be if the film didn't make Mortensen such a weakly pliable individual that it proves difficult to get involved in his plight. Moreover, despite the efforts of a talented, largely British cast (Mark Strong scores again as a silver-tongued Nazi functionary), the bland period re-creation does little to excite the imagination. The exception is a bristling Jason Isaacs as Mortensen's Jewish colleague, whose fierce outrage at the darkening tide of events is by far the most compelling thing in the picture.