‘My Neighbor Adolf’ Review: Cult Actor Udo Kier Plays a Man Who Could Be Hitler, Again

06.08.2022 - 03:17 / variety.com

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticIn “My Neighbor Adolf,” a Polish Holocaust survivor living in South America suspects that the belligerent German who’s just moved in next door could be none other than der Führer himself. How could that be? Hitler committed suicide in his bunker at the end of the war. Or did he? Director Leon Prudovsky’s middling mind game pits David Hayman and prolific German character actor Udo Kier against one another in what could have been a sly, “Sleuth”-style two-hander.

But the tonally uneven movie isn’t prepared for its own premise: If the man’s hunch is correct, what are the implications of making friends/enemies with evil?Years earlier, Malek Polsky (Hayman) sat opposite Hitler at the World Chess Championship in Berlin. He swears he’d recognize “those dead blue eyes” anywhere — and now they’re staring right back at him over the rickety wooden fence that separates their two properties. (The movie takes place in 1960, the year Israel captured Adolf Eichmann in Argentina.) To prove his theory, Polsky must trick this suspicious new neighbor (Kier), who calls himself “Herman Herzog,” into revealing his secret past.

This isn’t the first time Udo Kier has played someone who might be Adolf Hitler. In 2002’s bizarre half-hour short, “Mrs. Meitlemeihr,” Keir demonstrates how Hitler might try to conceal himself in London, had he survived the war: by disguising himself in drag.