We all know there's a world of difference between a movie's being "based on a true story" and being honest in all its particulars. "In Darkness" exemplifies that difference. It recounts the real-life saga of a mercenary small-time Polish crook and sewer worker who, for a steep price, shielded a dozen or so Jews in the maze of sewers under Nazi-occupied Lvov. But the details are dramatized in cliche ways. When one of the Jews chooses to return to the ghetto to inquire after a loved one's whereabouts, none of the Jews he asks knows the woman until the very last man happens to. A flash flood threatens to drown the hiding Jews in a well-staged late sequence; then, at the last minute, the water simply "goes away." The effect of a compelling story is not enhanced but cheapened by artificial aggrandizement.
