I should start by admitting that the 1975 film "Operation Daybreak" is one of my favourite of all time and I was looking forward to this new retelling of the events surrounding the assassination of Reinhard Heydrixh in Prague during WW2. Both films are, overall, pretty factually accurate as to the main details but both also include an amount of 'dramatic licence'. As it's impossible for me to discuss this film without comparisons to the earlier one I have decided to use 'watchability' as my main criteria and on that basis I'm afraid the 1975 film wins pretty conclusively as far as I'm concerned for a number of reasons.
After a few lines of text setting the scene Anthropoid jumps straight into the story as two parachutists land in a forest There follows an amount of exposition by way of the characters talking but because the film makers decided to have them speaking with Czech accents this is not always easy to understand.
This is a problem that runs throughout the film as, apart from the Germans who speak (unsubtled) German the rest of the cast all adopt these accents which, combined with an amount of mumbling and quiet dialogue caused me some problem throughout understanding some of the speech.
(In Operation Daybreak all the cast spoke unaccented English except for the Dermans who also spoke German but in several transmissions of the film this was subtitled which was a good thing to help understanding.) I don't know how much of the sequence where the two assassins make there way to Prague is factually accurate, a similar problem arises with the 1975 film but one short sequence did jar for me and that is when one of the men goes to shoot an escaping collaborator and his hand shakes so much he can't do it. Other reviewers have mentioned this, some enthusing how it shows the doubts the shooter has but personally I find it very difficult to believe that a previously decorated soldier trained by the SOE for the mission would really have a problem killing someone who could, potentially, ruin the whole plan! There are many sequences in this film where close ups of faces are used as well as what appears to be hand held cameras but I found such a modern technique rather jarring for this film and this wasn't helped by some fast cutting editing - if this had been a Jason Bourne film I would have expected it but not here.
I don't intend to summarise the story here - that's been done over and over in other reviews here but there is one aspect I do want to discuss as it is, for me, one of the main reasons I think 'Daybreak' is much better than 'Antropoid'. It concerns the character of Heydrich.
In this film virtually all we know about Heydrich is they plan to try to kill him. But that's about it! A few lines about him being a bad man but nothing really to make you really want them to succeed. In 'Daybreak' some time was taken to show how utterly ruthless the man was and he is superbly portrayed by actor Anton Differing. It made you WANT the assassination to work because you had some idea about him and this is almost totally lacking in 'Anthropoid'.
Admittedly some elements of 'Anthropoid' are more accurate than the earlier film - specifically the methods used to get information following the assassination attempt but whether this is just because they might not have been allowed to be shown in the 1975 film I don't know.
Both films have a 'love interest' which I felt slowed them down but this was something that happened in 'real life' to a lesser extent.
The final segments of both films are excellent, hard hitting and poignant and on this 'Anthropoid' delivers very well - except for one short bit near the end which I won't specify here but I will say it was schmaltzy and spoiled it for me rather.
At the end of 'Daybreak' as the credits rolled we were told what happened to each of the main participants and I was surprised this didn't happen with 'Anthropoid.
So whilst this film has a lot to commend it I personally think 'Daybreak' is much better for the reasons I have mentioned above.
After a few lines of text setting the scene Anthropoid jumps straight into the story as two parachutists land in a forest There follows an amount of exposition by way of the characters talking but because the film makers decided to have them speaking with Czech accents this is not always easy to understand.
This is a problem that runs throughout the film as, apart from the Germans who speak (unsubtled) German the rest of the cast all adopt these accents which, combined with an amount of mumbling and quiet dialogue caused me some problem throughout understanding some of the speech.
(In Operation Daybreak all the cast spoke unaccented English except for the Dermans who also spoke German but in several transmissions of the film this was subtitled which was a good thing to help understanding.) I don't know how much of the sequence where the two assassins make there way to Prague is factually accurate, a similar problem arises with the 1975 film but one short sequence did jar for me and that is when one of the men goes to shoot an escaping collaborator and his hand shakes so much he can't do it. Other reviewers have mentioned this, some enthusing how it shows the doubts the shooter has but personally I find it very difficult to believe that a previously decorated soldier trained by the SOE for the mission would really have a problem killing someone who could, potentially, ruin the whole plan! There are many sequences in this film where close ups of faces are used as well as what appears to be hand held cameras but I found such a modern technique rather jarring for this film and this wasn't helped by some fast cutting editing - if this had been a Jason Bourne film I would have expected it but not here.
I don't intend to summarise the story here - that's been done over and over in other reviews here but there is one aspect I do want to discuss as it is, for me, one of the main reasons I think 'Daybreak' is much better than 'Antropoid'. It concerns the character of Heydrich.
In this film virtually all we know about Heydrich is they plan to try to kill him. But that's about it! A few lines about him being a bad man but nothing really to make you really want them to succeed. In 'Daybreak' some time was taken to show how utterly ruthless the man was and he is superbly portrayed by actor Anton Differing. It made you WANT the assassination to work because you had some idea about him and this is almost totally lacking in 'Anthropoid'.
Admittedly some elements of 'Anthropoid' are more accurate than the earlier film - specifically the methods used to get information following the assassination attempt but whether this is just because they might not have been allowed to be shown in the 1975 film I don't know.
Both films have a 'love interest' which I felt slowed them down but this was something that happened in 'real life' to a lesser extent.
The final segments of both films are excellent, hard hitting and poignant and on this 'Anthropoid' delivers very well - except for one short bit near the end which I won't specify here but I will say it was schmaltzy and spoiled it for me rather.
At the end of 'Daybreak' as the credits rolled we were told what happened to each of the main participants and I was surprised this didn't happen with 'Anthropoid.
So whilst this film has a lot to commend it I personally think 'Daybreak' is much better for the reasons I have mentioned above.