This film is wonderfully topical. Eichmann is riveting in his ordinariness. He repeats over and over his conviction that he obeyed orders, and he prides himself that his superiors had nothing to complain about in the efficiency with which performed his duties. He also says it would have been futile to resist. He might easily have held an MBA from one of our finest business schools today, or a law degree from one of our foremost law schools. One goes along to get a along. What adds to his topicality is that today the American government is proceeding against Erik Snowden and Bradley Manning on what it seems to take as the self-evident principle one should always obey orders--especially if one is in the armed services or is an employee of the government. Eichmann does not lose his temper and is not irrational. On the contrary, he is wonderfully consistent. He functions therefore as a kind of terrible wake-up call indicating what one can come to if one will go all the way with the notion that orders from superiors relieve one from moral responsibility.
Review of The Specialist
