Max

A fascinating idea almost completely botched by two very strange interpretive decisions from Cusack and Taylor – Taylor is perhaps slightly more forgivable as we are really seeing Hitler’s “origin story” so a degree of poetic licence might be expected, even if it produces a character almost completely unrecognisable, but its Cusack’s jokey, mannered and very 90s performance which kills this. Cusack is a skilled and intuitive performer so I have to think he had a reason for performing as if in a Woody Allen comedy, but it’s clearly not the movie (or tone) that Meyjes is aiming for, leaving Cusack on his own to mine laughs (?) from lines like “Come on Hitler, I’ll buy you a glass of lemonade” which clang into inappropriateness when the rest of the cast play sincere and era-appropriate. It all leads to a thuddingly and irritatingly literal finale that’s supposed to leave us with… what?