HBO Max Holocaust entry “The Survivor” tells the compelling story of Harry Haft, aka Herzko Haft, a Polish Jew who survived Auschwitz by boxing fellow inmates for the amusement of Nazi military personnel, who then executed the losers.
“The Survivor” boasts impressive credentials. Its director is Academy Award-winner Barry Levinson (“Rain Man”). In the title role is Boston-born, indie-film regular Ben Foster (“Hell or High Water”), who is Jewish on his mother’s side and who lost a shocking amount of weight to play Haft as an Auschwitz prisoner. Inevitable comparisons will be made between “The Survivor” and “Raging Bull” (1980), and there are times when Foster’s Haft seems to a distant cousin of Robert De Niro’s Italian-American Jake La Motta.
The story bangs back and forth from Auschwitz to postwar Brooklyn and Georgia, and it is shocking to see the difference between Foster in the camps, where he is skin and bones, and Foster postwar, where he at first continues to fight and continues his crusade to find Leah (Dar Zuzovsky), the girl he was in love with and with whom he was captured by the Nazis. After the war, Harry meets Emory Anderson (Peter Sarsgaard), an ambitious journalist who convinces Harry that by writing his story for the newspapers, Anderson will help to find Leah.
In the camps, Harry encounters SS Officer Dietrich Schneider (Billy Magnussen), a sports enthusiast, who decides to serve as young Harry’s trainer and manager. In the course of his search for Leah, Harry meets and befriends Jewish researcher Miriam Wofsoniker (Vicky Krieps, “Phantom Thread”), kindling a romance. In postwar scenes, Harry trains in Brooklyn with Pepe (John Leguizamo) and later is helped by trainer Charlie Goodman (Danny DeVito) before Haft’s big fight with rising light-heavyweight star Rocky Marciano aka The Brockton Blockbuster.
Foster, who is a bit old to play young Harry in Auschwitz, delivers a sometimes powerful, sometimes shaky performance as Haft, whose life story has spawned a graphic novel published in Germany. The screenplay by Justine Juel Gillmer (TV’s “The Wheel of Time”) is too often mired by histrionics, tropes and cliches. The postwar Harry loses it perhaps too many times to keep us engaged.
We hear the despicable Nazi audience in Auschwitz chant, “Jewish beast,” at Harry and a Jewish cantor singing in postwar America. Later, “God Bless America” will be sung in Yiddish. Cinematographer George Steel (“Peaky Blinders”) shoots postwar scenes in color and scenes in the camps in “Schindler’s List”-like black-and-white.
SS Officer Schneider advises Harry that in life one is either “the hammer” or “the anvil.” “Take your choice.” I’ll be the fortune cookie. Scenes of a deeply troubled Harry trying to bond with his son Alan (Kingston Vernes) do not really work. A score by Academy Award-winner Hans Zimmer (“Rain Man,” “Dune”) adds another layer of expertise to a unique and mostly well-told story that combines Holocaust film and boxing drama, but never quite rises to the heights.
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'THE SURVIVOR'
Grade: B
MPAA rating: R
How to watch: On HBO and HBO Max.
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