Good German, The DVD Review

"The Good German" reviews

DVD

The Good German

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2007-11-02 15:50:17

Provider

DVD Review

The Good German is a period drama set in post-war Berlin, shot in black and white and featuring Hollywood's most active partnership, the star-director team of George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh. US army correspondent Jake Geismar (Clooney) has returned to the German capital to cover the upcoming Potsdam Peace Conference, where Stalin, Churchill and Truman met to determine the fate of Germany and Europe.

But a chance meeting with his former lover Lena Brandt (Cate Blanchett) casts Jake deep into conspiracy. Lena's missing husband - a Nazi SS officer - is the subject of a manhunt by both the American and Russian armies, who are competing to recruit German scientists - irrespective of wartime activities - in preparation for the looming Cold War.

Tobey Maguire is excellent as Corporal Tully, a soulless US soldier with his fingers in Berlin's black market pies, but Blanchett's performance - all husky German accent and weary amorality - reads like she's taken the acclaim for her Katherine Hepburn in Aviator and decided to try her hand at Marlene Dietrich.

Clooney seems uncertain how to play both against her and his role as the conscience of the film. Despite these flaws, the film is still engrossing. The story (historically true, if not tied to specific individuals) is fascinating, the cinematography beautiful (the current puritanical attitude to smoking is public health's gain but cinema atmosphere's loss, as this delightfully retro touch makes plain) and the sub-plots hang together plausibly by virtue of not being overcooked. Shame Soderbergh couldn't have adopted a similarly restrained approach to the film's style, which makes it look too much like a film abut post-war thrillers and not thrilling enough as a film.