What road should one take when approaching a film like An Officer and a Spy? On one hand, it is a perfectly robust, informative, prestige-y and even timely dramatization of the Dreyfus affair, the infamous late 19th-century political scandal in which a French Jewish soldier was wrongfully imprisoned for treason. On the other hand, it is a story about injustice and prosecution directed by, of all people, Roman Polanski.

So to that first hand: an especially dashing and mustachioed Jean Dujardin stars as George Picquart, the man responsible for pulling the thread from which the Dreyfus scandal ultimately unraveled. Polanski arranges the narrative in much the same way that Mike Leigh did with Peterloo, another film about 19th-century social injustice–and one in which the director carefully set out the names, dates, and people involved before going for the jugular in the final act. The first half of An Officer...