![]() As he writes, the action flashes back (in color) to the pre-war and wartime events that led to his work for the Allies and ultimately to his incarceration. The movie begins in the early '60s (in black-and-white) when Campbell is in an Israeli prison cell writing the story of his war activities to be presented in his defense at his upcoming war crimes trial. In fact, the absurdity of Campbell's situation - that by accepting the spy mission he agrees to be branded as a traitor for the rest of his life - only works in a somewhat zanier, more farcical atmosphere than director Gordon has created. Oh yeah, then Goodman mentioned some other guy, Campbell's undercover contact. Oops, I guess three people knew about him. Not only that, but it turns out that the information Campbell's broadcasts were sending to the Allies was being secretly inserted into his radio texts by an undercover American agent posing as a German radio censor. The question that screams to be asked at this point in the action is, why? Why, after the war, can no one announce that what Campbell did was not treason but life-risking patriotism? Goodman mumbles something about wanting to be able to pull off the same kind of scam in the next war, but this sounds pretty lame. And if he is captured by the Allies at the end of the war and charged with betraying his country, no one will explain that he was serving at the request of his president. If the Germans discover him, he will be disavowed. If Campbell succeeds at his spy mission, no one will thank him. His recruiter has informed Campbell that only two people will know that he is not really a traitor to his country the other one is FDR. Overnight Campbell's virulently anti-Semitic and anti-American radio broadcasts make him famous in Germany and a pariah in America. As war looms, an American agent (John Goodman) persuades him to spy on the Germans by posing as a rabid Nazi sympathizer. ![]() Nick Nolte plays Howard Campbell, an American by birth living with his wife (Sheryl Lee) in his adopted pre-World War II Germany and enjoying success there as a playwright. Instead he is one of the more grim humorists around, as the characters in "Mother Night" confirm. Still, you have the feeling that if he hadn't personally experienced the hellish firebombing of Dresden, he'd probably be Neil Simon today. Vonnegut the writer has always been a sort of dark imp, mischievously funny yet a priest of doom.
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