The movie has plenty of reason to view Berg as an enigmatic man whose personal history made him both suited for spy work and eager to help America win the war: He was, after all, a Jew - something of an outsider in sports, and a natural enemy of the Third Reich. Not just the usual sort of biopic fudges (like giving no hint of what a sketchy freeloader Berg turned out to be in his post-war years), but the kind that build major thematic elements on extremely shaky factual ground. But in concocting a rousing feature out of Nicholas Dawidoff’s best-selling book of the same name, Lewin and screenwriter Robert Rodat take eyebrow-raising liberties. So far, so good, in a handsomely designed period film whose cast is more than capable. The movie shifts gears divertingly a couple of times from here, with some exciting battlefield action (in which Guy Pearce plays the Army man leading the two eggheads through gunfire) eventually giving way to cloak-and-dagger stuff in which Strong must be inscrutable and just smart enough to avoid easy elimination. ![]() If he has any suspicion that Heisenberg might help Germany make a bomb, Berg is to shoot him on the spot. (Paul Giamatti), interview a scientist there and go on to Zurich to meet Werner Heisenberg ( Mark Strong), the man leading German nuclear research. Thanks to his linguistic and other abilities, he’s a good fit for a delicate job they need done: He is to travel to Italy with a physicist working for the U.S. Officials tell Berg about the Manhattan Project, explaining their concern that Germany might develop an atomic bomb before America. Donovan ( Jeff Daniels) to put him in the field. Immediately after Pearl Harbor, Berg brings this footage to the newly created OSS (forerunner of the CIA), where he is first hired for analytic desk work but eventually convinces chief William J. And he’s not even on Uncle Sam’s payroll yet. While touring Japan to play exhibition games with a group of American baseball stars, he sneaks off one day to the roof of the tallest building he can find, shooting 16mm film of what will become important military targets. Reading several newspapers a day, Berg suspects war is brewing well before it happens.
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