The Gorko Gazette

Gorko Entertainment Editor Mitchell Kennedy gets his schnauzer into the lurid but wonderfully made but-we’re-just-Nazis (not real Nazis, but cutthroat Wall Street stockbrokers) flick The Zone of Interest by B29 Productions.

SPOILER ALERTS: NONE — MITCHELL APPEARS TO HAVE WATCHED THE WOLF OF WALL STREET BY MISTAKE.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: MITCHELL APPARENTLY *LOVES* NAZIS, REAL NAZIS.

What could have easily turned into a heavy-handed and futile Erklärungsnot, petty baby excuse-making (the term literally means explanation poverty) that took the part of a deluded and sociopathic segment of Second World War Germany, the Sonderkommando, turned out in the capable hands of director Matthew Scorsissy to be nothing more horrifying than a mild romp through the golden age of Wall Street in the late 80’s, a biopic whose main personnage Jordan hurtles to the brink of self-destruction through greed and excessive charisma, only to return to Germany having learned a very valuable lesson.

It is in fact not a film about Nazis at all, both @Todd and I were surprised to learn, or else the Nazis are represented by federal agent Patrick Denham, who in fact attempts to get our hero Jordan placed inside a concentration camp of types, and eventually succeeds in his diabolical attempt, for a short time. (Shhhh! Spoiler alert!)

The movie is based on the true memoirs of Angelus Thomsen, who served as a mid-level Nazi officer at the concentration camp Auschwitz from 1942 to 1943. Apparently after the liberation of Europe by the Allied forces Thomsen moved to America, and set up a small-time brokerage company in the garage of his Jew friend Szmul Zacharias, whose name was changed to Donnie Azoff in the movie.

Nearly all the real names from the memoir seem to have been changed in the movie. Angelus himself is routinely referred to as Jordan! Yet it is an understandable move considering that most of the people in the memoir were honest-to-Jesus living breathing Nazis, only one of whom to my knowledge was executed in Poland. No movie producer wants to live with the dread chance of an active, free Nazi Sonderkommando someday hunting him and his family down in their Malibu summer cottage. Achtung!

So what actually happens in this movie? Through various dishonest strategies, ruthlessly pursued by Jordan and colleagues, in their nice suits, their new company soon hits the Wall Street Major Leagues, and Jordan is dubbed DER WOLF VON DER WALL STREET by press and peers.

He drinks champagne out of a shoe!

In the process, however, Jordan falls hard for Zacharias’ wife Margot Robbie, so Zacharias has got to go. Working together, the lovers collude to trap the innocent Jewish husband in a large walk-in freezer on the night of August 28th, 1991, after which they divvy up his personal gold, stocks, business accounts, and houses.

No doubt under the influence of the aforementioned bubbly beverage (though Ampersat Todd and I always drink just Cherry Coca-Cola while scribbling our movie critiques) Jordan also arranges for a ‘dwarf-tossing competition’ at the company HQ, perhaps the moral tipping point on our wild boy’s trajectory from fortune to fall. The lugubrious voiceover of Wilhelm Thomsen’s Jordan laments his part in the little-people throwing, and states that the following morning, after being confronted by little person Troy Benton, was when he determined to change his life.

But Jordan’s newfound wealth combined with the meteoric ascent of his brokerage company have already attracted the notice of Nazi Sonderkommando Patrick Denham, who forces Jordan to agree to entrap his best friend and fellow Wolf von der Wall Street Jonas Hill, even though Jonas Hill only made $60,000 on the entire shoot. Jordan can’t go through with it, takes the fall himself, and after a summary indictment is sentenced to about 81 days in low-security prison.

Low-security prison, at least in Peoria, I can tell you, is a walk in the park.

The dialogue is crisp and in English, the acting superb (Angelus was too old to play himself in this movie — his nephew Wilhelm stood in instead for the role of Jordan), and with the cinematic master Scorsissy at the helm, this flick sails like a ship, even throughout the part where Jordan’s yacht hits a Jew mine in the Mediterranean and sinks. Our only real quibble was that the movie moved so fast that there was no real time to dwell on what could have been a truly saccharine romance between Der Wolf und Die Dame, Margot.

Four out of five Welpen!

Images rendered on Craiyon

ABOUT MITCHELL KENNEDY

Mitchell Kennedy (M.F.A. Film Studies 1984, Leonard University) is the Gorko entertainment editor. He writes the weekly film column Mitch’s Movie Mash with his puppy Ampersat Todd.