Metacritic reviews

Extremely difficult but worthy film.

Grimly claustrophobic movies can make viewers put up a shield, yet Tim Blake Nelson (who directed O) invests this unusual Holocaust drama with dramatic intensity that in no way cheapens its subject matter.

When the larger question cannot be answered, the lesser one -- "What would you have done?" -- seems beside the point.

Jagged, unrelenting, claustrophobically intimate.

The movie's storyline is not always perfectly clear, seemingly falling into the same murky “grey zone” as everything else.

Nelson certainly passes muster for sincerity but, unfortunately, his movie doesn't have the same clear-cut quality.

Staccato, Mamet-style dialogue exchanges, breathless pacing and remarkably healthy, well-fed-looking actors create a cumulative sense of artificiality that seriously undercuts the devastating effect clearly being sought.

It plunges so deep, in fact, that the film winds up bordering on the unwatchable.

Nelson's work is relentless, grueling and courageous. He makes a large blunder in having American actors (David Arquette, Steve Buscemi) play Hungarian Jews with American accents, while Harvey Keitel plays a Nazi officer with a German accent.

Certainly an honorable film. But honorable is not always watchable.