My Best Enemy

Entertaining, though conventionally told war story.

The script relies on too many unlikely twists, but Bleibtreu manages to sell them all.

This twist-heavy World War II drama would play as an absurdist comedy if the director wasn't so dead set on excluding just about any trace of humor from his self-serious project.

An awkward blend of anti-Semitic atrocities and identity-swapping absurdity, the World War II drama My Best Enemy struggles to find a convincing tone.

Trying to be amusing and respectfully serious at the same time, Austrian director Wolfgang Murnberger's film remains in limbo, saddled with an over-worked story, characters and setting.

Getting even is wearying in My Best Enemy, a banal World War II thriller dependent on contrived role reversals.

The director has cited "Inglourious Basterds" as paving the way for his own movie; but for all his boldness, Quentin Tarantino avoided the camps altogether. My Best Enemy shows the camps only briefly, but once it does, it becomes both too much, and not enough. Once you see even a long shot of such a place, the impulse to find humor in much of anything is gone.