In the Second World War, Klaus Barbie developed a reputation as a ruthless, efficient -- even sadistic -- interrogator and counter-terrorism officer for the SS in Lyon, France. He earned the nickname "The Butcher of Lyon."

So when the war ended, what do you do with a guy like that? Well, for one thing, you don't waste his skills by prosecuting him as a war criminal. You put him to work fighting Soviet communism.

And when that runs its course, you have the CIA colluding with right-wing elements in the Vatican (Barbie was a German Catholic) help smuggle him to Latin America where he and other escaped, unrepentant Nazis can help right-wing generals with coups and maybe idly dream of a Fourth Reich in the Andes.

Filmmaker Kevin Macdonald plows this ground in My Enemy's Enemy, which has now finished screening at TIFF.

Barbie has been the subject of a film treatment before, most notably 1988's Hotel Terminus, a four-hour opus which won an Academy Award. Macdonald's film is 87 minutes long.

Macdonald is outraged that the United States or other western democracies would make use of a monster like Barbie.

One ex-Congresswoman he cites in the film notes that the U.S., through its proxy in Pakistan, armed Islamic extremists in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets there, and look how that turned out.

Whether that can be directly tied to the birth of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda is a matter of some debate. The CIA claims it only funded indigenous Afghan mujahedeen, not the Afghan Arabs, but I don't want to digress too far down that road.

In any event, those of liberal political sensibilities can find themselves outraged by this situation and find parallels to modern-day fiascos.

Frankly, I think Macdonald took the easy way out by not having someone argue the other side; namely, the ends did justify the means in Barbie's case.

A profound moral question that should be asked in these types of films is whether the voting public in western democracies would endorse or censure their governments for making use of the services of the Barbies of this world if they were fully informed of all the potential consequences.

Moral outrage is easy. Exploring the realpolitik of such situations would be much messier.

Mind you, Macdonald does include interview snippets with Jacques Vergès*, the notorious French lawyer who defended Barbie. At the 1987 trial, Vergès argued that what Barbie did was no worse than what French military officers did in Algeria, Russians in Afghanistan or Americans in Vietnam.

* Vergès himself is the subject of a TIFF film this year: Terror's Advocate.

Should you see it? It's a decent film that suffers from the documentarian's curse of too many talking heads. I would wait for the DVD if I had to do it all over again.

Afterthought

Had Macdonald graced the theatre with his presence, I would have asked him why he made a film on Barbie in the first place, given that much of what it reveals is already known. I'll have to watch Hotel Terminus and compare.

Barbie was convicted in 1987 and died in 1991, so his story is somewhat frozen in time.

There are much, much more current examples to start a rousing cinematic debate about ends and means.