Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

For anyone with a solid understanding of the history of WWII, this film is a masterpiece of the portrayal of actual historical events surrounding the assassination of Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich. Very few additional characters were needed to be added to keep the plot line flowing since the story itself is so riveting. For someone without a thorough knowledge of the event's history, Anthropoid could very well come across slow and boring. Let me explain. There are no major sub-plots that bring in colorful characters or exciting events, no "serious" steamy romance love stories that in other movies (i.e. Pearl Harbor) obliterates any true telling of the story. Anthropoid is first and foremost a historical drama. Unfortunate for the casual movie goer, the story is told entirely from the perspective of the men and women on the ground. There is never any attempt made to explain why London would ever consider assassinating the top Nazi in Czechoslovakia knowing full well that the reprisals from the Nazi's would be both brutal and extreme on the civilian population. To non-history buffs this could appear as an improbable plot flaw. History buffs, however, will understand the real reason for the assassination so for them this will never be a problem with the film. In fact, for history buffs it forces you to confront some uncomfortable realities about the assassination plot that we have probably never had to think of; such as how a small group of London-trained Czechoslovakians could arrive in Prague unannounced to the rag tag remnants of the Czechoslovakian underground and convince them to support them in a plot to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich. It makes for great drama in a movie that, going in, everyone knows does not have a happy ending for the Czechs.