German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was as righteous a gentile as you could be during World War II. His involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler landed him in a concentration camp. A brilliant scholar, Bonhoeffer completed his doctoral dissertation at the age of 21 and, after a visit to the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, challenged Christians to help the Jews in their time of need.
He was also one of the first to recognize the malignant evil of Nazism. That said, this documentary should be more riveting than it is. It gets bogged down in the turgid mechanics of Bonhoeffer's religious worldview, something that might entice soul-searching seminarians but probably few others. The film isn't helped by stilted, high school civic class-style narration, either. In this case, the tribute falls short of the measure of the man.