Walking with the Enemy is a different take on the usual Holocaust film. While I appreciate the filmmaker's efforts, the end product didn't attain its potential. The history of what happened in Hungary during World War II may not be as widely known, but Walking with the Enemy attempts to fill that cinematic gap.
Walking with the Enemy tries to explain both the fairly complex history of Hungary's choices during WWII and also take a humanitarian perspective and tell an "inspired by the life of" story at the same time. By the way, that story is of Pinchas Tibor Rosenbaum, who dressed as an Arrow Cross officer to ultimately save thousands of lives. For Walking with the Enemy, Pinchas is now Elek, who dresses as a Nazi SS officer, but he still saves countless lives.
As inspiring as the story is, the storytelling in the film is a bit disjointed and hard to follow. I want to like this movie. Really. But it's hard to like something that jumps between the Hungarian ruling party and Jews in hiding with no warning or seemingly without any logic. I often felt a little like my intelligence was being insulted because things were being so explicitly spelled out. People are fully capable of inferring knowledge or just picking things up as the movie goes along.
Despite the issues with storytelling, the cinematography and acting are superb. For being an indie film, it certainly feels like it has major studio backing because the sets and costumes, both things very specific to the time period, are perfect. I'm sure someone can nitpick things, but nothing is glaringly off.
Ben Kingsley plays Regent Horthy, the Hungarian leader who makes a series of difficult decisions during wartime and plays his part with a sort of tortured regality that I think only Kingsley could convey. That emotion seems so accurate for his character that it totally works.
Jonas Armstrong as Elek, the Jew who saves others by dressing as a Nazi, has such a total convinction for saving as many as possible that even when all seems lost, he does everything possible. He's lost his entire family during this war; his story is heartbreaking, yet he presses on to prevent as many others from suffering his same fate. It's amazingly selfless, and Armstrong has such a total convinction in his character.
The performances and the cinematography are great. The overall story...not so much. Walking with the Enemy would have been a stronger film if it had focused either on the stories of Elek or the history of the Hungary. Trying to combine the two just weakened it overall.
