This image released by Netflix shows George MacKay as Hugh Legat in a scene from “Munich: The Edge of War.”
This image released by Netflix shows George MacKay as Hugh Legat, and Jeremy Irons as Neville Chamberlain in a scene from “Munich: The Edge of War.”
This image released by Netflix shows George MacKay as Hugh Legat, left, and Jannis Niewohner as Paul Hartman in a scene from “Munich: The Edge of War.”
This image released by Netflix shows Jannis Niewohner as Paul Hartman, Sandra Huller as Helen Winter in a scene from “Munich: The Edge of War.”
This image released by Netflix shows George MacKay as Hugh Legat, left, and Jannis Niewohner as Paul Hartman in a scene from “Munich: The Edge of War.”
This image released by Netflix shows Jeremy Irons as Neville Chamberlain in a scene from “Munich: The Edge of War.”
This image released by Netflix shows Jannis Niewohner as Paul Hartman, left, and August Diehl as Franz Sauer in a scene from “Munich: The Edge of War.”
When we last we saw George MacKay running, he was sprinting full-tilt across a World War I battlefield. In “1917,” the British actor played a soldier tasked with delivering a message that a soon-to-be-launched offensive is doomed to fail.
In “Munich — Edge of War,” the year is 1938 and the setting is London, then Munich. But MacKay is again bearing urgent communications that sometimes cause him to race down city streets — like to hand the Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (Jeremy Irons) news of Germany’s latest actions against Czechoslovakia.
We’re not yet immersed in the helter-skelter of war, as in “1917,” but are poised in its prelude. As Hugh Legat, MacKay plays a recent Oxford grad and Chamberlain’s private secretary. Around London, Legat eyes the ominous signs of a gathering storm — a barrage balloon draped over a building — while witnessing the intimate workings of a prime minister maneuvering to keep Hitler in check. Time has moved forward two decades, but MacKay is again a bit player in a grand drama, desperate to prevent an inevitable catastrophe.
The film, which debuts Friday on Netflix, is directed by Christian Schwochow and adapted from Robert Harris’ 2017 book. Harris’ historical novel was premised on fact but invented a handful of characters that swirl around both Chamberlain and Hitler. Legat is one such invention, as his his college pal, Paul (Jannis Niewöhner), a German now working in his country’s foreign ministry, but stealthily trying to sabotage the rise of Hitler (Ulrich Matthes). With handsome period craft, “Munich — Edge of War” makes for a watchable, engrossing historical thriller with fictional characters situated like spies around political leaders at a profoundly tense, and ultimately woefully misjudged, moment in time.
