Metacritic reviews

It's not every day that movies present a Teutonic character in SS uniform as an unambiguously moral hero, so enjoy this rarity. And the film.

Costa-Gavras provides a post-war postscript to make clear that honesty is punished; cynicism survives.

Costa-Gavras' powerful, awkward Amen is a dramatically uneven historical thriller.

Tricked up with so many points that there's barely any flow to it.

While Amen works as a history lesson, it's less effective as a thriller, since the outcome is sadly all too well-known.

Amen is propelled by a most dubious assumption -- Gerstein's belief that if the German people knew of the Holocaust, they'd stop it.

In the end Amen is neither as moving nor as illuminating as it should be. It suffers especially when compared -- as is inevitable, given the closeness of their release dates -- with "The Pianist," Roman Polanski's movie about a Polish Jew during the Nazi occupation.

Unfortunately, structural flaws and a built-in lack of suspense keep it from being nearly as moving as it was intended to be.

The picture as a whole lacks the energy and incisiveness --the sheer anger-- that have marked Costa-Gavras's best films. A pity, because it is a true Costa-Gavras subject.

Too bloodless to satisfy except as a political exercise.