Even those familiar with the famous July Plot of 1944, in which a group of German officers led by Claus von Stauffenberg tried to kill Hitler, may not be aware that it was the last of more than a dozen planned or attempted assassinations.
The one detailed in this film, which missed its intended target by the title's number of minutes, took place barely two months after the war had begun, in the same Munich beer hall where Hitler had staged his abortive 1923 grab for power.
History robs the film of suspense potential, of course; the bomb goes off and the would-be assassin is captured in the first few minutes. What remains reads like a noble, but slightly worthy, attempt to disinter the reputation of a man largely forgotten in Germany until the publication of a 1999 biography.
That man is Georg Elser, a leftist unionist whose motives for the attempt, as this film has it, had much more to do with the class struggle than the geopolitical one. The film tells his story by flashing back from his brutal interrogation and torture to his earlier life as a carpenter and steel-mill worker, showing the development of his resolve and the flowering of his love for a married woman.
Hirschbiegel, whose 2004 portrait of Hitler's last days, Downfall, has sagged under the weight of years of online parody, bounces back from the turkey Diana with a handsomely mounted biopic that never really transcends the limitations of the genre.
