The Tenth Man (1988)

Screen legend Anthony Hopkins (When Eight Bells Toll, The Silence of the Lambs, Nixon) stars with Kristin Scott Thomas (Bitter Moon, The English Patient) and Derek Jacobi (Three Sisters, TV’s I, Claudius) in this compelling World War II drama based on the novel by Graham Greene (The Third Man). Jean-Louis Chavel (Hopkins), a wealthy French lawyer living quietly under Nazi occupation, is seized in a random police raid and thrown into a Paris jail with 29 other innocent men. Marked for the firing squad, he convinces a poor, dying prisoner to take his place by promising his entire estate to the man’s penniless kin. Once freed, the guilt-ridden Chavel returns to his former home and tries to help the family of the man who died in his stead. As he falls in love with the dead man’s sister, Thérèse (Scott Thomas), a stranger (Jacobi in an Emmy-winning role) calling himself “Chavel” arrives on their doorstep. Co-starring Cyril Cusack (Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming) with first-rate direction by Jack Gold (Who?) and photography by Alan Hume (Runaway Train), The Tenth Man is a stylish, powerfully acted thriller from one of the twentieth century’s most acclaimed authors.