Good (15)

THE award-winning play by C P Taylor is filmed with Viggo Mortensen abandoning tough guy roles to play a good man swept along by events outside his control.

John Halder is a German literature professor in the 1930s enlisted by the authorities who like the ideas he expresses in his novel about compassionate euthanasia. Government figures use the book in their propaganda and, as they rise to power, so does his career and he finds himself serving the Nazis. The effect on the people around him in his life - his wife, children and sick mother - is devastating, not least his close friend, a Jewish therapist (Jason Isaacs), whose own situation becomes increasingly fragile in Nazi Germany.

Brazilian film-maker Vicente Amorim directs with a certain amount of style that disguises the piece's wordy theatrical origins.