Rating: NR
Length: 186 minutes

Widescreen 1.78:1 Color (Anamorphic)

ENGLISH: Dolby Digital 4.0

None

This very loosely portrays the life and rise of Adolf Hitler from childhood to his coming to power prior to World War II.

The acting is superb along with the sets. Robert Carlyle is a very convincing Hitler and any movie with Peter O'Toole in it can't be all bad.

I lost count at the number of times I said "What the hell?" during the course of this film. I am no expert/scholar on Hitler but I strongly suspect I have read more books on the subject than most people and much of this film is nothing more than the imagination of the writers. Many of the specifics of Hitler's rise are unknown and whenever the writers felt a need to fill in the blanks they made sure to do it in a way that showed him as a fanatic and anti-Semite. To appease CBS that they were going to make a factual film, they hired an expert on Hitler, Ian Kershaw. He had his name removed from the project shortly after coming on board due to the countless inaccuracies.

Here's just one example of the distortion. What we know about him during WWI consists of his serving in the army as a messenger and winning two Iron Crosses (Germany's medal for bravery). To fill in the blanks they show Hitler beating a dog trying to force it to his will and brow beating a Jewish superior officer into giving him a medal because Hitler was the one person in the outfit that would defend a Jew; all fiction. If you really want to be entertained, watch the extras as the creators of this film try to justify their alterations; it was all they could do to keep a straight face as they tripped over their own ridiculous justifications.

• "Hitler: A Career" Featurette
• "Hitler and I: Reflections of Evil" Making-Of Featurette
• Trailer

Simply put this is a work of fiction about a person that did exist, lightly sprinkled with historical accuracies but portrayed as a documentary (that's funny, I didn't see the name Michael Moore in the credits). This is a visually stunning film with some great acting, just don't bother committing any of this to memory. This picture was made to give the audience what they wanted to see regardless of facts; a man that pure evil at birth and simply got worse.

Christian Duguay   [Joan of Arc]

James Babson - Rudolf Hess

[Hellboy]

Robert Carlyle - Adolf Hitler

[28 Weeks Later, Eragon, To End all Wars, Trainspotting, The World is not Enough]

Stockard Channing - Klara Hitler

Terence Harvey - Gustav von Kahr

[From Hell]

Chris Larkin - Hermann Göring

[Master and Commander]

Julianna Margulies - Helene Hanfstaengl

[Ghost Ship, The Mists of Avalon, Snakes on a Plane]

Jena Malone - Geli Raubal

[Contact, The Ruins]

Matthew Modine - Fritz Gerlich

[Full Metal Jacket, Transporter 2]

Patricia Netzer - Sophie Gerlich

Peter O'Toole - President Paul von Hindenburg

[Augustus, Becket, Joan of Arc, The Last Emperor, Lawrence of Arabia, The Lion in Winter, Troy]

Justin Salinger - Dr. Joseph Goebbels

Liev Schreiber - Ernst Hanfstaengl

[The Omen (2006), Scream, Scream 2, Scream 3, Sphere, The Sum of All Fears, X-Men Origins: Wolverine]

Peter Stormare - Ernst Röhm

[Armageddon, Bad Boys II, The Big Lebowski, Constantine, Fargo, Jurassic Park II: The Lost World, Windtalkers]

Zoe Telford - Eva Braun

Friedrich von Thun - General Erich Ludendorff

[Schindler's List]