Toronto. My Enemy's Enemy.

Kevin Macdonald's My Enemy's Enemy "is not a documentary that seeks to unveil the hideousness of Nazism - at this point, that subject has pretty much been exhausted - it instead focuses on [Klaus] Barbie's post-war shenanigans, which were wide-ranging and spanned another 40 years or so until his eventual arrest and trial in his twilight years," writes Ryan Stewart at Cinematical.

"Proving to be a useful Nazi to the intelligence services in the immediate post-war period," he continues, "he was actually protected and assisted when he attempted to relocate to South America through something called the 'ratline,' which funneled cooperative and useful Nazis to safe havens where they could be mined for information. A simple deal with the government was struck: Barbie would serve as a special agent against communist infiltrators in South America in exchange for protection against prosecution. Among the many services he provided along those lines, MacDonald learns, was eventually contributing to the capture of Che Guevara. Barbie's fight against Russian communists during the war simply morphed into a similar fight after the war, Macdonald argues."

"The movie's sense of outrage is muted a little by Barbie's story, which is so insidious and shadowy that the movie raises more goosebumps than eyebrows," writes Tom Hall. "The cowering, blank-eyed elderly man who is finally tried in France for his vicious repression of the Resistance is proof that terror is often embodied in the most benign-looking among us."

Earlier: David D'Arcy here and, in Variety, Robert Koehler.

Posted by dwhudson at October 3, 2007 5:04 AM