Fatherland is the adaptation of the Robert Harris bestseller which takes place in an alternate history where the Nazis were triumphant in the second world war.The story begins in Nazi Germany in the run up to Adolf Hitler's 75th birthday. The plot follows detective Xavier March (Rutger Hauer) investigating the suspicious death of a high-ranking Nazi. March meets with Charlie Maguire (Miranda Richardson) a visiting female US journalist who is mixed up with another murder and is determined to investigate the case and teams up with March. It looks like the victims were high ranking Nazi officials who decades ago were involved in planning the Holocaust.Rutger Hauer and Miranda Richardson are good in the lead roles. There is a roll call of British character actors in this HBO film from Micheal Kitchen, Peter Vaughan, John Shrapnel and Jean Marsh making a chilling cameo. Some of the actors are wasted in their brief roles.The film was shot in Prague and there were special effects use to make it look like a triumphant Berlin. The adaptation gets rid of some of the nuances and side plots of the Harris novel such as Nazi era European Community and becomes very much a staid thriller where someone wishes to keep the secrets of the past a secret.In doing so what makes the book standout has gone and what we have is a standard, made for television thriller, well made well acted but nothing out of the ordinary.

i like this "how would the world look like if ..." (in any direction) and we have a good example here - what if the Germans had not lost the second world war (and the description on this site is not correct - they have not won - they just have not lost in the movie)? how would the society look like, the people, the politics... yes, in the movie the Americans do not know about the extermination of the Jews, while in reality they refused to bomb the railways leading to the camps, and yes, i have a problem with thisbut i think that the mood in the movie and the wonderful acting did compensate me for this mistake. i would like to know more about this world, about life in other countries in it... and a movie able to do this is a hot candidate for my favorites listwatch it if you like alternative settings and movies with well made mood

Rutger Hauer and Miranda Richardson were very good in the lead roles but at the same time I don't think that they had great chemistry which is a letdown. Richardson's accent seemed to fluctuate a bit before settling down about half way through the film. Michael Kitchen was wasted in a small-ish role but he was as good as ever. Jean Marsh's performance, little more than a cameo, was chilling.One major flaw with the movie is that it didn't utilise the very talented actors that it assembled to maximum effect, two other notable examples being Peter Vaughan and John Shrapnel. Plus I had a hard time accepting Hauer as the good guy at first since I'd never seen him play one before. Anyway, it isn't a patch on the book but, all in all, I really enjoyed it.

I am so glad, that I have read the book first (total master piece, even better than Da Vinci's code, which integrated quite a lot of elements from Fatherland), cause the movie was a total disaster. In first 5 minutes the original story line is changed 4 times! after that I rather stopped counting mistakes. After half an hour I had to shot it down. I just couldn't stand the massacre of Harris's master piece. My advice to those who want to know the story is to read the book before seeing the movie cause there is a big possibility you will lose all your interest in the story if you start with that terrible movie. And missing this story is a sin! And now, can anybody answer me, why Americans always destroy all the good stories, when they turn them into movies?