Anthropoid

Jamie Dornan and Cillian Murphy in Anthropoid

Sean Ellis' Anthropoid, from 2016,  is an impassive rendering of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich that occurred in June of 1942. At the time, Heydrich's official title was Deputy Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, but he was more commonly known in Allied territory as "The Butcher of Prague". His assassination was a morale booster for the Allies in a war that had had few successes for them up to that point. 

Józef Gabcik (Cillian Murphy) and Jan Kublis (Jamie Dornan) were dropped by parachute into Czechoslovakia from England with the directive to eliminate Heydrich. The film focuses on the accomplishment of their mission with assistance from members of the Czech resistance, many of whom became martyrs to the cause in the aftermath of the assassination. Ellis' objective style suits the mechanics of the plot well. When it is depicting the conspirators devising the means of Heydrich's demise or picturing Resistance infighting, Anthropoid is on firm ground. 

However, the film, which bears the ominous title "based on true events", founders in pairing the two male leads with romantic counterparts. Ellis is too stolid and objective a director to give the love scenes any pulse. Anthropoid meanders rather than races to its conclusion. The most effective film about the assassination is still Fritz Lang's 1943 wartime propaganda film Hangmen Also Die! with a script written by Bertolt Brecht, no less.

There are a large number of film and television features about Operation Anthropoid. So many that Detlef Bothe, who plays Heydrich in Anthropoid, had already played the fiend twice before. Laurent Binet's novel HHhH, published in 2010, provides the best overview of this historical episode and its subsequent portrayals in literature and film.