History is messy. It’s loud, it’s violent, and usually, it’s a lot more complicated than the version we get in high school textbooks. That's exactly where The Man with the Iron Heart movie steps in, trying to bridge the gap between a glossy Hollywood thriller and the brutal reality of 1942 Prague.
Honestly, the film is a bit of a gut-punch.
Released in 2017 (and sometimes titled HHhH depending on where you're streaming it), the movie tackles one of the most pivotal assassinations of World War II: the killing of Reinhard Heydrich. If you haven't heard of him, he was basically the architect of the Holocaust. Hitler called him "the man with the iron heart," which isn't exactly a nickname you want on your resume.
The film doesn't just show the assassination. It spends the first half building up Heydrich as a monster. It’s uncomfortable. It’s slow. Then, it pivots entirely to the two young paratroopers sent to kill him. It’s a jarring structure that left a lot of critics confused, but if you’re a history nerd, it actually makes a weird kind of sense.
What Most People Get Wrong About the History in the Movie
Most war movies love a clear hero. We want to see the good guys win and go home. But The Man with the Iron Heart movie refuses to give you that satisfaction.
The film is based on the book HHhH by Laurent Binet. That acronym stands for Himmlers Hirn heißt Heydrich (Himmler's brain is called Heydrich). One major misconception is that this is just another "catch the bad guy" flick. It isn't. The movie spends a grueling amount of time showing Heydrich’s rise within the SS. Jason Clarke plays him with this cold, robotic precision that makes your skin crawl.
You see his disgrace in the German Navy, his marriage to Lina (played by Rosamund Pike), and his eventual descent into becoming the "Hangman of Prague."
Some people complain the movie is "split in two." They’re right.
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The first hour is a biopic of a villain. The second hour is a resistance thriller focusing on Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík. This shift is intentional. You have to understand the scale of the evil to understand why these two young men were willing to drop into a Nazi-occupied city on what was essentially a suicide mission.
Operation Anthropoid—the real name of the mission—wasn't some clean, tactical strike. It was a disaster that somehow worked. In the movie, the actual assassination attempt is chaotic. The Sten gun jams. There’s screaming. It’s not a polished John Wick scene. It's desperate.
The Casting Choice: Jason Clarke and Rosamund Pike
Let’s talk about the performances. Jason Clarke has a face that can look incredibly kind or deeply terrifying. Here, he leans into the latter. He captures that weird, historical detail about Heydrich—that he was a world-class fencer and a talented violinist while simultaneously planning the Final Solution.
Then there’s Rosamund Pike.
She plays Lina Heydrich, and she’s arguably more terrifying than her husband. In real life, Lina was a staunch Nazi before Reinhard even knew what the party was. The movie shows her as the driving force behind his ambition. It’s a nuanced take on a historical figure who is often ignored.
The paratroopers, played by Jack O'Connell and Jack Reynor, bring the heart. O'Connell, especially, has this "raw nerve" energy. You feel his fear. You feel the weight of the fact that he knows the Nazis will kill thousands of innocent people in retaliation for this one death. And they did. The movie doesn't shy away from the Lidice massacre, where an entire village was razed to the ground as "revenge."
Why Critics Hated It (and Why They Might Be Wrong)
When you look at reviews for The Man with the Iron Heart movie, you’ll see a lot of "meh" scores. Rotten Tomatoes wasn't kind.
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Why?
Mostly because of the 2016 film Anthropoid. Cillian Murphy and Jamie Dornan starred in that one just a year earlier. It covered the exact same event. Critics felt like they’d already seen this story, and they preferred the tighter, more focused narrative of Anthropoid.
But The Man with the Iron Heart tries to do something different. It tries to be a psychological study of power. It wants you to see the paperwork. It wants you to see the domestic life of a mass murderer.
Is it perfect? No. The pacing is weird. The English accents for Czech and German characters are always a bit distracting. But it feels more ambitious than your standard Sunday afternoon war movie. It’s trying to capture the "banality of evil" that Hannah Arendt famously wrote about.
The Brutal Reality of the Cathedral Siege
The final act of the movie takes place in the Saints Cyril and Methodius Cathedral in Prague. This is where the story goes from a spy thriller to a Greek tragedy.
The seven paratroopers were betrayed by one of their own, Karel Čurda. The Nazis surrounded the church with over 700 soldiers. The movie depicts this siege with a terrifying intensity.
There’s a specific moment—one that actually happened—where the SS tries to flood the crypt to drown the men hiding inside. Watching them try to push the fire hoses back out through the small vent in the wall is one of the most claustrophobic things you’ll ever see on film.
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It wasn't a "glory" moment. It was seven men against an army.
They held out for hours. They saved the last bullets for themselves. The movie doesn't romanticize this; it just shows it. It’s dark, wet, and incredibly sad.
Historical Accuracy vs. Hollywood Drama
How much of The Man with the Iron Heart movie is actually true?
Surprisingly, quite a bit.
- The Sten Gun Jam: Yes, Gabčík’s gun really did jam at the worst possible second.
- The Grenade: Kubiš really did throw a modified anti-tank grenade that hit the rear wheel of Heydrich’s Mercedes.
- The Hospital Scene: Heydrich didn't die instantly. He died days later from sepsis caused by horsehair and upholstery fragments from the car seat getting lodged in his spleen. The movie tracks this slow, pathetic end.
- The Retaliation: The destruction of Lidice and Ležáky is historically accurate and remains one of the darkest chapters of the war.
Where it takes liberties is mostly in the dialogue and the intimate scenes between the soldiers and their girlfriends. We don't know exactly what was said in those safe houses. But the "bones" of the story are remarkably solid.
Actionable Insights for Viewers
If you’re planning to watch The Man with the Iron Heart movie, or if you just finished it and your head is spinning, here is how to get the most out of the experience:
- Watch 'Anthropoid' (2016) back-to-back with this. It sounds crazy, but seeing two different directors tackle the same event highlights what each one prioritized. Anthropoid is about the mission; Iron Heart is about the people.
- Read Laurent Binet’s book. The movie is a standard narrative, but the book HHhH is "meta-fiction." The author constantly interrupts the story to talk about how hard it is to write about history without lying. It adds a whole new layer to what you see on screen.
- Research the White Rose movement. If the resistance aspect of the movie interests you, look into other internal German and occupied-territory resistance groups. It wasn't just paratroopers; it was students and everyday citizens.
- Check the filming locations. Much of the movie was shot in Prague and Budapest. If you ever visit Prague, you can actually go to the Saints Cyril and Methodius Cathedral. The bullet holes are still in the walls outside the crypt. It’s a heavy place to visit, but it puts the movie into a startlingly real perspective.
The movie isn't "fun." It’s a somber, violent, and deeply personal look at a moment that changed the course of the war. If Heydrich hadn't been killed, the Holocaust might have been even more "efficiently" carried out. That is the grim reality the film forces you to sit with.
To understand the full impact of Operation Anthropoid, you have to look past the cinematography and see the desperate gamble for what it was: a sacrifice that saved lives by ending one of the most dangerous men in history. It reminds us that even in the face of absolute darkness, there are people willing to strike a match, even if they know the fire will consume them too.