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Oct 20, 2018CaptainHecto rated this title 2 out of 5 stars
Here we are in Huis Doorn, Kaiser Wilhelm's residence-in-exile since 1918. It's the spring of 1940, the Germans have just invaded the Netherlands, and a wounded infantry captain is assigned to protect the ex-emperor there. (He is an officer in the regular army, not in the SS or the Waffen-SS, as a uniform-challenged comment erroneously asserts below.) Into his bed leaps a comely Dutch maid, who just happens to be a British agent sent on a personal mission from Winston Churchill! Will the Nazi leadership bring the Kaiser back to Berlin and restore him to his throne? Will Churchill's agent shoot somebody with the revolver she is always cleaning? Will our Hauptmann turn in the British spy once she is no longer between the sheets? Or will he be a Good German responding to a higher loyalty (aka “The Exception”) and help her escape from the Gestapo? And then there is the biggest question of all: will you be able to watch this movie? Christopher Plummer has a grand old time playing Kaiser Bill as a music hall monarch. Janet McTeer is simply wonderful as the emperor's snobbish second wife, and Ben Daniels is very good as his faithful adjutant. Then there is Lily James, who raises the temperature as the dangerous maid who can't keep her clothes on. But the prize has to go to Eddie Marsan for his cameo as dinner guest Heinrich Himmler: cold, sinister, but also clueless, pedagogical, and oh so vulgar at the same time. Alas, all of this acting talent cannot overcome the goofy screenplay. But if you do stick it out, look for a nice little touch in the last thirty seconds.