MUBI

The Nazi villain sounds British, the British hero sounds American, and the story meanders for a long, momentum-free stretch in the middle, which plays like a halfhearted Hitchcockian romantic adventure (circa A Lady Vanishes) by a director who’s clearly more comfortable with fatalism. But with the final scenes, Fritz Lang’s Man Hunt plants its flag on a nether regions of the human psyche. Above all, it’s a ferocious document of 1941: this is clearly motivational propaganda for a country on the brink of war, but unlike, say, Casablanca, its keenly aware of the psychological implications of going off to kill another human being. Lang may be at his most boring when he shoots for conventional entertainment, but even his weaker films are interesting, and that, if anything, is a hallmark of a great director. Recommended for Lang completists, Nazi villain impersonators, and collectors of British stereotypes.

7 out of 10