This European co-production drama, about a literature professor who unwittingly becomes a Nazi stooge in the run up to the Third Reich, doesn’t do much to answer the age-old question of how ordinary individuals can become bound up a collective evil. It does, however, prove illuminating on a comparatively lower-stakes issue — mainly, When Bad Movies Happen to Good Actors. Now, if Viggo Mortensen truly believes that didactic position-paper period pieces — the kind littered with anvil-heavy Cabaret–style foreshadowing (“Hitler is a joke”), German characters speaking in clipped British accents and the inevitable Aryan temptress (who gets so turned on by our bookish patsy’s Party garb that she initiates a blowjob) — are the best use of his talent, that’s his prerogative. But it’s still embarrassing to watch somebody who has given two of the more interesting and inventive lead performances of recent years flailing so hard to elevate something so low.