The Odessa File [DVD] [1974]

Have watched the film a few times, but the book was so much better, brilliant writing and read so well .

One of my favourite films, Download was easy, stored on my ps4 I can watch it anytime

Another 80’s fantastic conspiracy thriller, with nazis lurking in The background to kill The great Jon Voight.

Well, of course Frederick Forsyth is a world class thriller writer, if not the top one ever. How could I possibly select Odessa for pre-eminenceabove "The Veteran", "The Negotiator", "The Deceiver", or "The Fist of God".? And yet I must. This is one of his earlier books, on anever popular but more historical subject (Nazis), but I can't put it down, even if I read it (present tense) three times a year. It's not just that there really IS not a dull page, it's like all great art - one learns something or is reminded of something each time one reads it. I just lovehis way of putting small stories inside the main one, of telling the story of the Jewish victim (Tauber), then that of the Nazi hunter (the real-life Wiesenthal), or that of the little timid Nazi forger (Winzer), or even the tank commander (mentioned in passing) right at the end. The story is gripping, the text exciting,, the characters well drawn, the history accurate, the whole entertaining AND instructive. As a thriller reader I'll betyou come to the end and just can't bear it, & have to start again. Where Forsyth gets his information beats me, he must have an ear stuck tothe wall of every government building & terrorist camp!My favourite episodes? - 1. Sigi is a kindly & understanding girl, does not despise her (striptease) customers with loathing as the other girls do.Peter: "But they are just dirty old sods with a pocketful of cash to spend." "Well they wouldn't be if they had someone to take care of them."Forsyth shows his human understanding here. 2. (Germans): "We're a very obedient people. It's our greatest strength & our greatest weakness.It enables us to build an economic miracle while the British* are on strike, & it enables us to follow a man like Hitler into a great big mass grave".(*For "British" read "French" nowdays...). 3. Here's a lesson in politics for us all in one sentence, in why things move so slowly: "Six milliondead Jews don't vote. Five million former Nazis can & do, at every election": 4. "There had been a time when people did not reject his orders &he had never quite got used to the change". (Oh, misery! We retired managers know that one all right, don't we?). Just one more, - father offorger to mother: "Are you saying, foolish woman, that our son's ration cards are inferior to the Yankee ration cards?'An amazing book. When you've finished it (twice), do read Haffner's "The Meaning of Hitler".

nothing i dislike,,many thanks

This is possibly one of the greatest Cold War thrillers, although it is not always understood as such because it deals with post WW2 Nazism, a phenomena that was no longer supposed to officially exist but in fact, just like the Soviets, who carried on their clandestine operations, spying and trying to gain the upper hand with everything from assassinations to economic espionage, so did former Nazis and SS officers in Germany and Austria - spiriting away war criminals to live a fight another day and at the same time repatriating vast sums of stolen money that they had hidden in Swiss private deposit banks, to fund their new 'Economic Miracle' in West Germany. Our hero, Peter Miller, played by John Voight, stumbles into a gargantuan plot by the Odessa (the organisation of former Nazis) to bring about the final fulfillment of the 'Final Solution' - the plot to exterminate the Jewish people. This is a brilliant and cleverly constructed thriller and, to me, has stood the test of time and still has resonances to this day.

Brilliant true story highly recommend after this movie for over a decade

Super Aryan (John Voight) was created to kill the enemies of the Reich. The whole intent was for him to impregnate the tanks of the enemy with the wonderful killing device that was the 88 mm gun.There is nothing worse than having your own weapon turn against you.This is quite the best film about the holocaust. It is no didactic Speilburg epic.Certain individuals "roll" without constraint. Wiping out the Jews was kind of incidental."Well we played the game a bit harder back then and a few individuals got ground beneath the wheels. So what? Life goes on. We were all doing it and to not do it would result in one's own terminus. It was not wrong (what is wrong?) and when the Amis re-wrote the rules we covered our backs."Now this makes it all real. There are plenty out there today who would play that game. We wonder where all the Nazi players came from: they are still there but society's constraint prevents them from getting inventive.This film is about justice in its rawest form. They are made to look at their crimes and to pay.And on top of this film has probably the greatest plot twist of any film I have watched.