Decent Movie, But Could Have Been Great

Terrific cast. The storyline was inspired; a Nazi General being pursed for murder by his own army in the middle of WWII. But while it's a watchable story, it needed a tighter screenplay adaptation from the book that focused solely on the murder investigation, which would have also kept the run time down to a manageable 2 hours.

1) It was far too obvious who the murderer was almost from the start. There was really no attempt made to throw off the audience or cast the other generals as possible suspects.

2) The Hitler assassination sub plot added nothing to the main story.

3) Hartmann's relationship with Ulrike, and her bickering with her mother added nothing. What was the purpose of having her go to a club to meet Hartmann, only to be swept up in a Gestapo dragnet...and then released with no consequences?

4) Omar Sharif was underused, and we never see him actually doing much investigating. He instead farms most of it out to a French detective. He never poses any real threat to the generals.

5) OK, we got it...Tanz is a messed up nut job. We didn't need scene after scene of his crazed staring with his upper lip dripping sweat.

6) The dialogue was pretty flat and uninspiring. How do you manage to have two actors like Omar Sharif and Peter O'Toole, both of whom could wield dialogue like a weapon, in a 180 minute movie and have no memorable quotes?

I think there was the idea that this would be an "epic", but it just ended up being kind of a mashed together character piece rather than the unique, taunt thriller it could have been.