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Yet in the end the self-conscious importance of the film produces a rather queasy feeling, for really this story is no more than a crude exploitation — decked out with our latest scientific finery — of what amounts to a penny dreadful fantasy. If you stop and think about it, even if there were a nest of Nazis hiding out in South America, most of them would be pushing 80 by now, and quite incapable of the exertions required by this farflung, not to mention farfetched plot. You can't escape the thought that the largest danger they present these days lies not in the real world, but in the movie world. They are almost the last incontrovertibly evil figures left to tempt film producers, the last people we can all agree to hate.
But films like this — and Marathon Man a couple of years ago — detach the Nazis from the historical wickedness that their kind committed and that we do well to bear in mind, and make them into faintly risible characters, just a step or two away from Mel Brooks creations. No amount of fancy framing can finally distract us from this unfortunate and diminuating effect.
Richard Schickel