Review: 'The Last Vermeer' can't settle on being a brooding post-war thriller or a flamboyant courtroom drama

In his directing debut, Dan Friedkin delivers two half-movies in “The Last Vermeer,” and the halves never come together into a satisfying whole.

Based on a true story, the film starts weeks after the fall of the Third Reich, as Amsterdam is starting to rebuild from the horrors of World War II, with the sometimes unwelcome help of the Allied forces. Capt. Joseph Piller (Claes Bang), a Dutch Jew who survived as a member of the Resistance and now wears a Canadian uniform, is at work trying to identify artworks acquired by the Nazis, in hopes of reuniting them with their original owners — some whom were Jewish families.

Piller is onto a big discovery, a rare work by Johannes Vermeer, the 17th century Dutch master, in a train car that held works pilfered by Herman Göring, one of Hitler’s top officials. Piller follows the paper trail, and discovers the painting was sold to Göring by Han Van Meegeren (Guy Pearce), a party-loving Dutch art dealer and unsuccessful painter, for a record sum of 1.6 million guilders.

Soon Van Meegeren is on trial for collaborating with the Nazis. Piller is pressed into helping make a novel defense argument: That Van Meegeren wasn’t selling priceless Vermeers to the Nazis, but rather fooling the Nazis into wasting their money buying worthless fakes.

The performances are intriguing, with Pearce’s overly confident showman striking a contrast with Bang’s morose survivor. Among the supporting cast, the most fascinating is Vicky Krieps (Daniel Day-Lewis’ young foil in “Phantom Thread”), who brings a sexy competence to the role of Piller’s sharp-eyed assistant.

Friedkin and his screenwriting team, adapting Jonathan Lopez’ book “The Man Who Made Vermeers,” have trouble deciding whose movie this really is. Is it Piller’s, following the former Resistance fighter as he tries to uncover the truth about the Vermeer? Or is it Van Meegeren, the self-absorbed bon vivant trying to pull a con on the Nazis? Friedkin can’t seem to choose, leaving a muddled mess between them.

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‘The Last Vermeer’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, November 20, in theaters where open. Rated R for some language, violence and nudity. Running time: 117 minutes.