The Night of the Generals

Warsaw, 1942. A woman is murdered, and the only witness reports seeing the stripe of a German general's trousers on the killer. Three generals are possible, and Grau, the intelligence officer running the investigation, has no authority to touch any of them. Anatole Litvak lays a murder inquiry over a war crime, and the tension comes from one question: does chasing a single killing mean anything inside a system killing millions. Peter O'Toole plays one of the generals cold and brittle, with Omar Sharif as the investigator. The story reaches forward to the 1944 assassination attempt and beyond the war. The crowded cast and the length are the weak points. Who it is for: viewers who like wartime thrillers and films that argue about the difference between crime and guilt. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a brisk procedural, since it keeps drifting into period panorama.