The false notes in Netflix’s adaptation of Robert Harris’s Munich come in the final scenes. Jeremy Irons, who has been portraying Neville Chamberlain so well that you forget he is an actor, suddenly sounds like an old stager the director has forced to splutter lines he suspects will convince no one.
Chamberlain is on the plane back to Heston Aerodrome after allowing Hitler to carve up Czechoslovakia at the 1938 Munich conference. He is about to tell the crowds back home that he had Herr Hitler’s promise to work together to ensure that ‘all Europe may find peace’ – the vain and stupid boast for which history remembers him.
His officials urge him to treat agreements with Hitler with caution. If he breaks his word, Chamberlain will look like a fool.
‘Well,’ shouts Chamberlain, ‘if he breaks his word the world will see him for who he truly is! And it will unite the Allies.
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