Marking Werner Herzog's return to features after a decade spent making documentaries, this lumbering study of Nazi-sympathising mesmerist Erik Jan Hanussen never comes close to rivalling the complexity and intrigue of Hanussen, director Istvan Szabo's 1988 treatment of the same story. As the conflicted entertainer, whose bogus accomplishments bewitched Weimar Germany, Tim Roth delivers his lines in a near-hypnotic monotone and fails to emerge from the shadow of Klaus Maria Brandauer's portrayal in the earlier film. But it's the hesitant handling of the story and the painfully uncomfortable performance of Jouko Ahola - as the Polish Jew roped in to play an Aryan strongman in Roth's act - that fatally undermine a drama already bereft of significant historical or psychological insight.

A Jewish strongman performs in Berlin as the blond Aryan hero Siegfried.