Orders to Kill

A way above average Asquith film, this is a WWII drama, with Massie sent to Occupied Paris to kill a Resistance leader (French) suspected of being a Nazi collaborator. But his target turns out to be a mild-mannered family man with Lillian Gish for a mother. Despite his doubts (later proved to be well-founded), the deed is done, and the movie starts to focus on Massie's later life. Working well in the first half as a thriller, it then turns into a Graham Greene-like, intensely Catholic study of the conflict between conscience and duty.