Normally films this good are trumpeted to the heavens. But then Mother Night is by no means a typical movie. It mixes complex ideological discourse with career-best performances, and the saddened irony of Kurt Vonnegut with the terrifying reality of Hitler's Germany. In other words, it's a hard sell, but a hell of a rewarding movie. Vonnegut himself - upon whose novel it's based - puts in a blink-and-you-miss-it appearance, offering a stamp of approval for what is an extremely successful attempt at taking a notably difficult novel to the screen.
Nolte is electrifying as Howard Campbell, an American journalist living in Germany, who finds himself caught up in a web of deception and loss of identity. The mysterious G-man recruits him to help spy against the Nazis - Campbell delivers coded pro-Nazi broadcasts that help the Allies by advocating Hitler. Somewhere along the way, the lines become blurred, a hero becomes a villain and a man loses his life.
Gordon, whose previous effort A Midnight Clear was as marginalised as this is almost bound to be, is obviously a filmmaker of considerable talent. Here he not only elicits sterling work from the likes of Arkin, Kirsten Dunst and Lee (doing another Laura Palmeresque double-up), but drags a career-best performance out of Nolte, who is mesmeric, devastating and ultimately devastated as a man caught between unacknowledged heroism and a life destroyed.