His name then was Ricardo Klement, a plain and simple appearing man who favored cardigan sweaters and cheap horn-rimmed black glasses, a kind of dark and shadowy “Mr. Rogers.”

Mr. “Klement” took the bus from a stop a few yards from his house in a suburb of Buenos Aires, to the city where he was a foreman in an auto factory.

Movie info

“Operation Finale”

Biography, drama, history

A team of secret agents set out to track down the Nazi officer who masterminded the Holocaust.

Length: 122 minutes

MPAA rating: PG-13 for disturbing thematic content and related violent images, and some language.

Director: Chris Weitz

Writer: Matthew Orton

Stars: Oscar Isaac, Ben Kingsley, Mélanie Laurent

His house was set back across a weedy field, and had neither telephone nor electricity. One would walk or drive the dirt road nearby without ever noticing it. Almost no one.

This is how Adolph Eichmann, the “Architect of the Holocaust,” the monster who had slipped out of Germany and fled to Argentina where he was welcomed by other former Nazis, was hidden from Israeli eyes and lived in the shadows of time hoping he would be forgotten. But those who survived would never forget.

Director Chris Weitz and writer Matthew Orton are here to refresh our memories, but touch lightly on Eichmann’s “working” years in their “Operation Finale,” showing just enough footage of the horrors to establish his identity, and remind us not to forget.

We see how Mossad Agent Peter Malkin (an effective and powerful Oscar Issac) and Rafi Eitan (Nick Kroll) the leader of team, had to persuade the top members of Mossad back in Israel that capturing Eichmann and bringing him home to try in open court was a much more powerful act then to just assassinate him, throw his body in a ditch and forget. Forgetting, like failing, was not an option.

The actual taking is breathtaking and accurate. In the early darkness of evening, Peter walks by Eichmann (Ben Kingsley) on the dirt road from the bus, turns and grabs him; there is a struggle, and others run up and pull their quarry into the car.

Inside the candle lit house, Mrs. Eichmann (Greta Scacchi) hears something, peers out the window, but all is dark now, and all is over.

Once Eichmann is taken to the safe house and secured in a room on the top floor, the preparations to get him to Israel are stymied.

El Al, the Israeli Airline that agreed to fly the team and their quarry out of Argentina, insisted that international treaties required Eichmann’s signature on a document saying he was willingly to leave with them. Eichmann resists signing. Then another problem arises.

The very powerful Neo-Nazi group in Buenos Aires know Eichmann has been taken, and where the safe house is.

With government pressure, they stop any El Al flights from proceeding for 10 days. With the plane’s engines idling, the Nazi group rushes to the house to stop them.

The last 15 minutes of “Operation” is probably the longest breath holding 15 minutes since “Casablanca,” Ben Affleck’s “Argo,” or in my opinion, Dustin Hoffman’s dash to the church in the finale of “The Graduate.” Some Hollywood finagling was clearly employed here, but for this reviewer, it worked, and it will work for you.

Chris Weitz’s direction is properly entertaining and professional. Some think he got more than lucky with his cast. Matthew Orton’s script, on the other hand, sails nicely along, until he begins to fall in love with Peter and Eichmann’s mental ping-pong games and drags them out.

Javier Aguirresarobe’s camera has dozens of nice moments: The dim lighted upper room, the candlelit Eichmann home, for example. Alexandre Desplat’s music couldn’t be better.

Kingsley’s potrayal with Eichmann, like in his amazing and beautiful Oscar winning “Ghandi,” and his accountant in “Schindler’s List,” is precise, technically perfect and artistically astonishing.

French actress Mélanie Laurent appears in a totally invented composite character as “Hanna Elian,” a doctor persuaded to come along to administer a drug to Eichmann. A waste of her time.

Oscar Isaac is, as always, impressive in his ability to pick and choose the right moments and perfect moves in every role he plays. The test here, in which he wins an A, is to stand toe to toe in several emotionally difficult scenes with Kingsley, who for two hours and three minutes, disappears before our eyes and reappears to chill our blood as Adolph Eichmann, the “Architect of the Final Solution.”

J.P. Devine, of Waterville, is a former stage and screen actor.