I don't want to spoil the movie for future viewers. I'd just give several pieces of historical information to keep in mind before watching the film:During World War II, it wasn't an option to shut up and look German. Germany was notorious for keeping records of every person's family lineage for centuries. Changing your name was not a viable option to escape persecution.Excusing your not serving in the army with any type of disability equaled death, since there was a strict policy to execute people with disabilities.You couldn't bargain your way out of a concentration camp by offering money. All Jewish property was taken by Germany by law. If you happened to find an escape option, it wouldn't include a Nazi escort with fanfare.Hitler's ideology makes him highly unsuitable to sit and have a sophisticated dinner with a Jewish family. That's self-explanatory. The discipline and control among the Nazi soldiers was even higher than the control exercised over normal citizens. Please, remember this during the second half of the movie.Escaping as a Jew from Germany or any occupied territory was close to impossible. That why any survival stories are heart-wrenching and heroic. The person who wrote the script and directed the movie wanted a dramatic effect, but - it seems to me - was less interested in a historic research.I watched dozens of Holocaust movies and documentaries. I even watched a movie in which a girl opened the door of her home and was suddenly transported into the past of World War II. Even that movie had much more historical accuracy than this one. I find it insulting to treat such a serious and tragic subject with shallowness.

I would rank this movie along with Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards as one of the best war time movies. It was without doubt a thriller. You should however gloss over some liberties taken in the script related to knowledge of concentration camps, the camaraderie and parleying on equal terms with the Nazis etc., Every frame was nail baiting one. There were a lot of twists and turns throughout. The brutality of Nazi Germany is revealed without any gross exhibition. No Blood, no hanging, no bodies lying around. The movie begins with shots of the Auschwitz museum. It gradually catches pace keeping you engrossed throughout. I will watch this movie again after 6 months for its sheer adrenalin rush. There was this commentator who listed out a number of errors related to custom, wrong airplane. Come on guys, this is a movie. Allow the Director/Script Writer to take some liberty so that he can make the movie enjoyable. If you want 100 accuracy you need to watch a documentary not a fictional movie.

Another in the string of "Holocaust" movies released in recent years, "The Aryan Couple" is a fictionalized account of a wealthy Jewish couple buying their way out of Germany in 1944 in return for handing over all of their wealth to the Nazis, represented in this film by Himmler and Eichmann along with a number of subordinates - some repulsive and some more sympathetic. Martin Landau had the lead role as Jewish industrialist Joseph Krauzenberg - desperate to get his family out of Germany before they end up being sent to Auschwitz or Treblinka. Added into the mix are the Krauzenberg's "Aryan" servants Hans and Ingrid, who are really a Jewish couple working for the resistance who also need to be spirited out of Germany before their real identities are discovered.The movie attempts to reveal part of the somewhat shadowy plan to exchange Jews for cash (the so-called "Europa Plan.") In that it sheds a bit of light on a piece of the Holocaust that hasn't really received very much attention over the years. This isn't however one of the stronger Holocaust movies, in spite of its relatively fresh subject matter. It tends to plod along for the most part, until moments of extremely high tension suddenly appear (such as the dinner at the Krauzenberg home attended by Eichmann and Himmler which included a wonderful performance by Judith Parfitt, who played Rachel Krauzenberg, as she displayed her completely undisguised contempt for her Nazi guests), the revelation of Hans and Ingrid's true identities and their eventual escape into Switzerland. Sometimes, though, it seemed to me as if director John Daly was trying too hard to raise the tension in those dramatic scenes, almost as if to compensate for the relative lack of drama in the rest of the movie.This is certainly worth watching because it does deal with a little known aspect of the Holocaust, but in no other way could it really be considered a great movie. (4/10)

The Aryan Couple is a film that covers a story and general subject matter without the respect nor attention they both deserve. It tells the most spectacular of tales in quite the most unspectacular of fashions; dumbing down harsh, gritty, disturbing goings-on in 1940s Eastern Europe into a bland, televisual, underwhelming series' of events - the idea and the situations most of the characters find themselves in are quite incredible, the cinematic translation from script to screen is anything but. Directed by now deceased John Daly, he of mostly producing credit fame; the film adopts a somewhat flimsy, 'point and shoot' aesthetic running on what appears to be a film stock more akin to the whatever format they used in the 1980s for shooting specifically made-for TV, usually police orientated, serial dramas.The film sees elderly, wealthy Jewish Hungarian Joseph Krauzenberg (Landau), and his family of various generations, come up against the Nazi war machine whom observe this successful Jewish businessman and naturally, want in. Using all the powers, bargaining, wrangling abilities he has plus something known as the 'Europa Plan', Joseph attempts to essentially trade in what he owns for he and his families' lives. But a film revolving around this would result in whatever threat there might be, born out of whether the Nazi's would stay true to their word or not. As it happens, there're some incidences in which this is used to get across a scrap of dramatic weight; but the real story going on here is that which relates to the title: an Aryan couple whom work for the Krauzenberg family and are secretly working for the resistance; so secretly in fact, that their employers know nothing of it. The film begins with a somewhat ill-judged sequence which sees a whole load of holocaust iconography thrust into our faces. Where, maybe a series of text might have been more efficient informing us of necessary statistics and actions that were going in at the time, in the area; Daly throws a series of scenes at us in which dramatic shots of death camps and cattle trains accompanied by the necessary music are the order of the day; on one particular occasion, a tracking shot towards an oven as the looming, brooding sound effects crank it up a level. From the off, the film lays out its hand; telling us to feel the pain and the emotion which comes with this sort of subject material rather than allowing us to naturally arrive at this point in our own time as the film tragically progresses.Following the premature bombardment of some of this content, the film will cut to a train station and use a second manipulation cue, in that it provides us with a Nazi guard on the platform tossing a child's toy onto the coal carriage located just behind the engine – obviously lost or dropped following the ensuing chaos of herding those 'guilty' of Judaism onto a cattle train. It's this somewhat sickly identification the film makes with the fact there are children involved, which again, begs us to fast-track emotion and feel the pain and emotional anxiety which almost certainly comes when better films are executing similar subject matter in a more efficient manner. The opening is an acknowledgement to those that died, whereas the film is more about those that are desperately doing everything in their power to survive. Daly's referencing to those that did perish is nothing more than exactly that; a mere 'nod' of the head, a removing of the hat to those that suffered – to say it doesn't quite reach the levels of achievement Polanski got to in 2002's The Piainist, in terms of getting across a sense of fear; loss; tragedy; risk and survival – all at various points and all observed brilliantly, is a gross understatement. The Aryan couple of the title are Hans Vassmann (Doughty) and his wife Ingrid (Carver), two people whom it is established are 'doing their bit' in smuggling in the necessary items required to run a resistance outlet at the Krauzenberg's huge home. One of only very few tense moments comes early on involving the two when they try to get past a German checkpoint whilst carrying items they'd surely be shot for possessing. It might've been even more effective had the German guards not been played by British actors speaking in English the whole time – is it asking too much to have German actors playing these role and using the German language? It would seem the film-makers were worrying a little too much about audience accessibility to the piece than giving a more authentic experience for the rest of us.The film maintains a pretty desperate sense that it wants to tug at those heart strings more often than not, thus encompassing some pretty melodramatic acting accompanied by some daftly executed scenes; best highlighted in the instance when some family heirlooms are handed over to the Aryan couple in a 'thank you' gesture. Some Nazi officers carry scars on their faces to emphasise evilness; most of the lines at the more tense of times are representative of peculiar screen writing and are delivered in the worst of fashions: "We will never be forgotten" a character states at one point around a dinner table, over a rousing musical score, but we're not involved enough to feel anything; while a moral predicament two people question each other over seems half-baked and lacking in any sort of real dramatic effect. The Aryan Couple is quite the little cinematic misfire; a floundering mess of an adaptation of what is a supposedly true story of something which deserved better.