KANSAS CITY – The Second World War is an endlessly fascinating mine for cinematic story-telling. Bullets, bombs, and clearcut villains and real-life, world-shaping stakes tend to do that. So it’s always a delight when an under-told twist on the stories makes it to the screen. Such is the case with Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.
You may know the name behind this based-on-a-true-story film. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor who resisted the Nazi-fication of the church in 1940s Germany. He helped found the Confessing Church, a denomination seeking to remain faithful to Christ instead of the Führer, and led an underground seminary. His books, Life Together and The Cost of Discipleship remain very popular and influential reads in Christian circles.
The new movie, directed and written by Hollywood veteran Todd Komarnicki, jumps around Bonhoeffer’s short life, showing his time in America studying at Union Seminary in New York, his efforts to undermine Hitler during the War, his efforts as a double-agent working against Germany, and the days after his arrest and imprisonment by the Gestapo.
It’s an exciting story, even if that jumping timeline is unnecessary and takes some getting used to. Komarnicki (who wrote Sully and produced Elf) knows how to build tension and dread, as seen when Gestapo and SS officers attend Bonhoeffer’s anti-Hitler sermons and begin to tighten their net around him and his co-conspirators. Terrific German actors round out the cast and help add depth and realism to the movie, particularly Bonhoeffer (Jonas Dassler) and his brother-in-law, Hans (Flula Borg). Produced by Angel Studios (producers of The Chosen), the production values are very high, and the movie looks great.
My main issue with the movie is its theology, or lack thereof. As with any movie based on reality, details are changed. Bonhoeffer’s ministry and faith – while undeniably present – are short-changed to give more time to his efforts as a spy, sometimes to the extent of exaggeration, especially his role in the assassination attempt on Hitler (The image of him holding a pistol in the movie’s poster is a blatant misdirection that doesn’t appear in the movie).
While I love seeing a Christian protagonist in a story, the elements of faith and doctrine that are there are so watered down and bland. To be fair, this likely will be the case in every faith-centered movie until the faculty of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary take my advice and band together to start writing movie scripts. And even if it were written with a theological-historian’s pen, there are many elements of Bonhoeffer’s theology you would not like hearing from your pulpit on a Sunday morning: for example, he was influenced by notable liberal theologians, and while he had a relatively high view of the Bible, he did not believe in the strict inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture. Still, I would have liked to have seen more of the theological reasoning behind his brave resistance in the face of Hitler’s regime.
Curiously, despite the extreme resemblance in titles, this movie has zero connection to the 2010 Eric Metaxas book, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. It’s difficult to see the title of the movie as an attempt to ride the popular book’s coattails. Though that book is a significant investment in time at 640 pages, it offers a much more detailed profile of the man who was willing to risk his life to stand up to Hitler for the sake of the gospel.
Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin. is rated PG-13. The rating takes into account smoking and general war imagery. There is no sensuality or harsh language.