This movie feels like someone shot two separate movies - one being Heydrich's biography, second being action thriller about his assassination - cut the run time of each one to half and merged them together. The first half follows Reinhard Heydrich on his rise to power, orchestrated by his wife Lina. It's not exactly a thrilling spectacle, but both Jason Clarke and Rosamunde Pike deliver solid performances (although Clarke is far from the brilliance of Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's list). The problem is that the story line seems absurdly rushed, many important events are left out or shown through short collages with voice-over and music playing and it just feels incomplete. I would love to see a full 2 hours long Heydrich's biography that would dig deeper into Heydrich's relationship with his wife, his rise to power and his work and status in the Nazi regime.
Unfortunately, after one hour of this rushed biography, the movie almost completely abandons Heydrich and his wife (both have literally minutes of screen time in the second half, most of it together) and shifts focus to Czechoslovak paratroopers in Prague. Since then, it feels like Jimenez just took the movie Anthropoid (2016), cast new actors, re-shot the movie shot by shot and cut out half of the scenes. If you have seen Anthropoid, you can skip the second half in its entirety and you won't miss anything. The fact that Jack O'Connel and Jack Reynor look alike to the point it's easy to confuse their actions doesn't help either. The only upside of the second half is Mia Wasikovska who does much better job than Ana Geislerova in Anthropoid. HHhH (or The Man with the Iron Heart) is not a bad movie per se, it's just oddly structured, rushed and given the existence of Anthropoid, feels a bit redundant.
