A masterwork based on a piece of history that shouldn’t get lost.

Rather than reconsidering history by intimate acquaintance with a lesser-known hero, it turns its hero into a stick figure no more personalized, complex, or contextualized than a comic-book creation. Far from arousing curiosity, the movie forecloses it.

Polanski confines the resolution to an epilogue, he has nevertheless made an oft-told tale lively and urgent. “An Officer and a Spy” is Mr. Polanski’s finest work in many years.

J’Accuse feels like an act of cinematic indictment of ignoring of fact, glossing over for the institution more strongly when one stares corruption in the eye and refuses to blink or act.