WHO'S FOOLING WHO? (MUNICH: THE EDGE OF WAR)
Images of Chamberlain prematurely declaring "peace in our time" after talks in Munich that allowed the Nazis to annex the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia continue to haunt his legacy.
By way of contrast, his successor Winston Churchill is the yardstick by which all British Prime Ministers are judged at a time of crisis.
Churchill is seen as the pugnacious, wily Englishman who defiantly resisted a Nazi invasion and played a key part in the eventual defeat of Hitler.
Robert Harris' 2017 novel 'Munich' sought to rehabilitate Chamberlain's image and now it has been turned into a gripping Netflix political thriller by German director Christian Schwochow.
Adapting Harris' novel for the big and small screen, Ben Power begins his tale in Oxford where Jannis Niewhonner's Paul Von Hartmann, Liv Lisa Fries' Lena and George Mackay's Hugh Legat are enjoying a carefree life as undergrads, swiping bottles of champagne during an outdoor party.
Six years later Hugh is working in Downing Street as the private secretary to Jeremy Irons' Prime Minister Chamberlain.
Meanwhile in Berlin, Paul is working as interpreter and is embroiled in covert efforts to thwart Ulrich Matthes' Fuhrer waging war.
Lena is nowhere to be seen.
Hugh and Paul have become estranged after a visit to Germany where the latter appeared to defend the rise of Adolf Hitler and commend him for restoring national pride.
Married to Jessica Brown Findlay's Pamela Legat, Hugh is feeling the strain of being pulled away from his family as tensions mount in Downing Street about the possibility of a second world war.
Pamela is frustrated by the furtiveness of her husband and his refusal to listen to her ultimatums to choose between his family or his job.
Duty calls and Hugh works all hours, tending to the needs of a Prime Minister who is determined to do everything he can to avoid war.
Meanwhile in Germany, after translating Chamberlain's latest speech for Hitler, Paul privately discusses a plan by Generals to arrest the Fuhrer.
However that looks to have gone by the wayside when Hitler agrees to a peace conference in Munich and Paul acquires a file that reveals the Fuhrer's true intentions to invade other nations and exterminate the Jewish population.
Given to him by a colleague, Sandra Hiller's Helen Winter, he arranges to be a part of the team of translators attending the Munich conference but asks if word can be sent to British intelligence that Hugh is part of Chamberlain's delegation.
In London, Nicholas Farrell's Sir Alexander Cadogan and intelligence chiefs question Hugh about his links to Paul and reveal that he will receive important intelligence while he is in Munich.
Hugh joins the Prime Minister for the conference and is reunited with Paul on its fringes.
While he plots to pass on the information to the British delegation, Paul is careful not to arouse the suspicion of an old classmate, August Diehl's sly Franz Sauer who is part of Hitler's bodyguard team.
Heading into the negotiations with Chamberlain, Domenico Fortunato's Benito Mussolini and Stephane Boucher's French Premier Édouard Daladier, Hitler takes a bit of an interest in Paul and borrows his wrist watch.
Meeting up with Hugh in a beer house while the talks take place, Paul passes on the file.
But can they get it to Chamberlain before he strikes a deal?
Harris has built a reputation over the years as an author who toys with historical events in his thrillers.
Schwochow and Power do an excellent job adapting Harris' novel, keeping the audience gripped from the off and embracing the author's fictionalised elements of the story.
They deliver a handsome production and are aided and abetted by Frank Lamm's sharp cinematography, Jens Kluber's pacy editing and costume designer Frauke Firle, production designer Tim Pannen and set decorators Julia Roeske and Liz Ainsley's keen attention to period detail.
It helps too that Schwochow has assembled a terrific cast in his bilingual movie.
Mackay and Niewhoner make engaging leads - the former as reliable as ways and impressively handling his scenes in German.
Niewhoner is a revelation to English speaking audiences - capturing the paranoia and unease of Berlin officials about Hitler's true intentions.
Liv Lisa Fries is a great foil for them both as Lena in the scenes where she appears.
Ulrich Matthes is a suitably unsettling presence as Hitler - so much so that you keep expecting him to break into a psychotic rage but that rarely comes in a performance that is admirably self-controlled.
Alex Jennings is superb as the senior British civil servant Sir Horace Wilson and Mark Lewis Jones is also delightfully pompous and gruff as Hugh's boss Sir Osmund Cleverly.
Robert Bathurst pops up as the British Ambassador to Germany, Sir Neville Henderson, while Nicholas Farrell is good value as Sir Alexander Cadogan.
August Diehl is a menacing as Paul's former classmate, while Sandra Hiller brings an earnestness to the role of Frau Winter.
Anjli Mohindra is also eye catching as Joan, a no nonsense Downing Street secretary who accompanies the delegation.
Jessica Brown Findlay does her best with a thankless role that requires her to badger Mackay as his disillusioned and frustrated wife.
If Niewhoner slightly upstages Mackay's impressive performance, the movie is undoubtedly stolen by Irons.
The veteran English actor runs with Harris' belief that Chamberlain was deeply misunderstood, depicting him as a principled man who was prepared to do all he could to avoid a repeat of the carnage of the First World War.
Historians will no doubt quibble with Harris' and the movie's contention that Chamberlain struck the deal with Hitler to buy some time for Britain to equip itself in the event of the Nazis launching an assault on other European nations.
Sometimes the movie is also a little too on the nose in its attempts to be an edge of your seat thriller.
Do Paul and Franz Sauer really have to share a railway carriage together, while he smuggles the classified file on Hitler's true intentions?
Does Paul really have to conceal a pistol during a meeting with Hitler as if he is going to assassinate him?
Nevertheless Schwochow delivers a genuinely entertaining film that never loses its grip on its audience or slackens its pace.
As a political thriller, it is a very solid piece of work.
It pretty much delivers what you would like from a period thriller.
Whether the film will rehabilitate the reputation of Chamberlain, though, is doubtful.
But fair dues to them for trying.
('Munich: The Edge of War' opened in UK and US cinemas on January 14, 2022 and was made available for streaming on Netflix on January 21, 2022)
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