On the surface Fighter is about two old friends in their seventies, Jan Wiener and Arnost Lustig, Czech immigrants who decide to take a trip back to Europe after having lived in the United States for many years. As they retrace Wiener’s escape from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, however, the film becomes an enthralling story about memory and friendship. Wiener’s story of his father’s suicide, laying flat under a train on an eighteen-hour trip to Italy, joining the Royal Air Force, being accused of being a British spy, and returning to Czechoslovakia only to be put in a communist labor camp is enough to capture the audience’s attention. But conflict arises, and keeps arising, when Lustig, a Holocaust survivor and former member of the Czech Communist Party, who wants to write a book about the journey and his own past (his father died in a camp), constantly analyzes every decision and action of the past (something Wiener has no patience for). With scenes that in matters of minutes take you from tears to laughter and then to anger, Fighter demonstrates how reliving memories can bring old friends closer than ever and take them to the brink of collapse.  JM