Movie Review: Fugitive Pieces

Unbeknownst to Jakob the saintly one was a Greek national called Athos. Through thick and thin, by hook and crook we witness the subterfuge methods this stranger utilizes to safeguard and protect the young child from what would have been a certain death. Flash forward some thirty odd years where we get reunited with Jakob, now in a modern world, educated and apparently well fed.

Anyone who has survived the Holocaust knows it’s not easy to sleep at night and this transplant has more than his share of upheavals in the new promised land. Images of the brutality his family faced in 1942 continue to take its toll on Jakob and those around him.

Director/screenwriter Jeremy Podeswa firmly thrusts us into this messed up man’s mind as he manages to shut out all would be friends. Female companionship also takes a back seat to the relevant past with untold consequences.

Cinema goers know full well there have been many films on the World War II experience and all the aftermath. Here we get to peek inside the mind of a troubled man who just can’t shake what happened way back then. Using the Greek Islands as a beautiful backdrop it’s visually stimulating to see one man endure the horrors of confinement as a youth and the quiet serenity of the peaceful Mediterranean.

Good acting and a nice old world atmosphere smartly tells the tale of one man’s quest for peace of mind. Stephen Dillanes (The Hours) comes across convincingly as the messed up Jakob with a younger version well depicted by Robbie Kay (Hannibal Rising). Hats off to the warm work of Rade Serbedzija (Batman Begins) whose all charm as the caring Athos, a man of the world not above putting his own life on the line for a defenseless child.