Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
In December 1941, Czech soldiers Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš parachute into their occupied homeland to assassinate Nazi officer Reinhard Heydrich.
Anthropoid is a gripping, well-researched war thriller that benefits enormously from its true story and the harrowing church siege finale, which is genuinely tense and emotionally devastating — earning a strong Ending score. The plot is solid but follows a fairly conventional structure for WWII resistance narratives, hitting expected beats of preparation, romance subplots, and escalating danger without particular narrative invention. Acting is competent and committed from Cillian Murphy and Jamie Dornan, though characterization is somewhat thin, preventing the performances from reaching exceptional territory. Cinematography is serviceable with good period atmosphere but rarely visually distinctive. Novelty sits at average — while the specific story of Operation Anthropoid is underrepresented on film, the execution follows well-worn genre conventions of the WWII thriller, making it distinctive in subject matter but not in filmmaking voice.