The House on Garibaldi Street

Topol as an Israeli secret agent kidnapping Nazi Eichmann from Buenos Aires? The mind boggles. In fact the problems of this humourless piece of faction (made for TV) are elementary: since the real raid (in the '60s) was a perfect success (ending in Eichmann's trial and execution in Israel), the possibilities for action and suspense are severely limited; the acting is often comic; the plot remains juvenile. What survives surprisingly well is a lack of pretension and a workmanlike sense of limitations which, at times - the nighttime kidnapping scene, for example - even generates a mood of gritty low-budget energy.