Im Visier des Bösen

France, 1942: The influential banker von Gall (Gottfried John) has deposited 700 million Reich marks in Switzerland to help German Jews flee the country. The Gestapo arrests Gall, but the access codes to the money are safely hidden: Gall’s nephew Thomas (Thomas Sangster), an eleven-year-old chess genius, has them stored in his memory. The Nazis force the philosophy professor Lämmle (Klaus Maria Brandauer) to search for the boy and get the codes. The hunt for the money becomes a chess game whose stakes are life or death. Like the work of literature it is based on, "Daddy,” by Loup Durand, the film adaptation also succeeds in combining historical fiction with suspenseful thriller. For a major European production "Im Visier des Bösen” enters untypical terrain: instead of Napoleon and Edmond Dantes, ARD focuses on more recent history, compellingly enacted by an impressive ensemble.