User reviews

Soderbergh continues to experiment, but as with Solaris, it just doesn't pay off.

Its clear that from the off that Soderbergh has set himself a strict mandate for this film, make it as much like a forties movie as possible. The music, the acting style, the lighting, the process shots and background paintings all give it a great look and feel.

However, everything is so low key and downbeat that it fails to deliver any suspense or menace. What is essentially a modern thriller dressed as classic noir just isn't thrilling. The plot twist and turns but the drama is never heightened, the pace never seems to increase, it just plods along to its conclusion.

Apart from the sex and swearing, the actors seem straight jacketed into their roles by the 40's styling seemingly because the script lacks any of the dry wit and charm you'd find in a genuine movie of this era. George Clooney for example has every little to do, his character has none of the snappy dialog you'd expect, given his Marlowe-esquire role in the plot. Soderbergh compounds matters by drawing an unfortunate comparison with Bogart. Though generally the acting was of the high quality you'd expect from such a sterling cast, it's difficult to empathise with their characters plights given the lack of suspense or melodrama.

Overall the experiment fails to deliver anything other than a beautifully shot but unengaging film.

Very disappointing.

In true noir-ish fashion, much of the intrigue with The Good German is about to whom, and why, the title applies. For a film that has so much devotion to being a 40s recreation or homage, and in spite of another mesmerising performance from the very talented Cate Blanchett, it is also a mystery as to why it is not more of a runaway success.

Employing the grainy black-and-white look of Good Night and Good Luck, only more so, The Good German is a formal exercise in original 40s technique. It uses as its subject 1945 Berlin and the nightmare scenarios of post-war safety. Blanchett plays Lena Brandt, a Jewish German, who attributes her amazing survival to being the ex-wife of an SS man. (She claims he is dead, by the way). Her boyfriend is the violent and abusive Patrick Tully, engagingly played by Tobey Maguire. But haunting her life is also good-guy George Clooney, in the shape of US Captain Jake Geismer. They go back a long way. In more than one sense, to put it delicately. He is disturbed to see her turning tricks as much as he is to see her hanging out with a low-life like Tully.

Lena wants to get out of Berlin, but that is easier said than done. Our film is awash with intrigues as everyone individually tries to help her, but everyone also schemes against each other. Who is a war criminal and who is just an ordinary German? Understandably, no-one wants to be caught with their pants down, and everybody is in Lena's.

Lena herself plays her cards very close to her chest. She only reveals her hand towards the end. As she takes over centre-stage, her story provides some tension and emotional ballast to a plot that is otherwise a bit lifeless. Disappointingly, the usually capable Clooney is the weak link in the acting. His usually charismatically chirpy, cheeky style seems anachronistic and makes him look both typecast and mis-cast. The part could have been written for Humphrey Bogart. There and many thematic and visual references to Casablanca. But Clooney's lack of gravitas highlights the film's stylistic weakness. The Good German is ponderous without conveying a seriousness of the subject matter and so ends up just seeming self-important.

Beautiful noir-ish chiaroscuro lighting is a delicious hearkening back to more substantial classics of old. But, with the exception of Lena, the characters lack the moral ambiguity that was so characteristic of such films. Jake mentions, "the good old days - when you could tell who was the bad guy by who was shooting at you." But, although the line could have come out of the mouth of Bogart, it refers to a period and style of film-making that is a world away from what this tries to be.

Lena (Cate Blanchett) is a mystery, and the film is worth seeing for this magnificent, towering performance, that is also a study in emotional complexity. Long-suffering, she oozes oceans of repressed emotion in a way to make Ingrid Bergman proud. Although more complex than female protagonists of 40s movies, she is still the most successful part of the whole homage.

The story does have a little more subtlety than one might have expected, but I find it hard to imagine vast audiences wading through it joyfully until the pace eventually picks up enough to warrant serious interest. It's good to see the usually very capable Steven Soderbergh directing serious cinema again (instead of his Ocean's Eleven romps) but this over-ambitious project doesn't quite cut it. See it if you're a fan of Blanchett, or if you enjoy seeing Clooney getting beaten up.

A clever look: imitation vintage B-movie in black and white; Steven Soderbergh's appropriate, artful gimmick for this film set in Berlin in the immediate aftermath of WWII.

Cate Blanchett turns in an apt theatrical performance given "The Bad German's" archly retro conceit. As the film's mother/whore femme fatale, Cate is sphinx-like, world-weary and made up like a drag queen at Mardi Gras. George Clooney, meanwhile, turns in his routine performance that is altogether too modern and casual. Put him in scrubs and he's ready again for the ER. Together, they create no chemistry nor any other natural science. Toby McGuire, as a sleazy, black-marketing GI, is so painfully hammy you'll find yourself begging for him to stop.

The storyline is awkwardly developed and unnecessarily opaque, its characters cold and remote. There's really nobody to cheer for or identify with; no emotions to hook us into this world. When was the last time that international intrigue, on-screen, was so unintriguing? It's too bad we've been served such an exciting cinematic look -- an overly lit, noir-like one -- only as window dressing on a story as bleak and dreary as the blitzkrieged landscapes on view.

Soderbergh is a director with a decent amount of guts but not a lot of talent. Here he attempts to make a classic Hollywood film, reminiscent of The Third Man and Casablanca, by mimicking, or at least trying to mimic, the classical style of cinematography, by scratching the negative, having the dialogue recorded on mono (I think), and having the actors deliver performances along the lines of the studio days. The gimmick honestly doesn't work all that well. Lovers of classic films will notice how different the film-making is from that of the '40s. How hazy the cinematography is compared to Casablanca or The Third Man (it looks like you're watching a movie on a black and white television). Or how much more swearing and sexual content there is in the film. Yes, the gimmick is a weak one and somewhat detrimental to the rest of the film. Otherwise, it's a pretty good mystery. Not a great one. The pacing lags in the middle, and the mystery only starts to make sense right near the end, when much of the audience has stopped caring. The film's strongest asset is Cate Blanchett, who channels Marlene Dietrich. She is easily one of today's best actresses, and the only cinematographic triumph of the film is the lighting of her face – she's drop-dead beautiful. I'll probably be hung by the nostalgists, but I'd take her – in both her acting skills and beauty – over the lead actresses of Casablanca and The Third Man. George Clooney is decent, but his character is fairly two-dimensional. He's a pretty boring hero. I really liked Tobey Maguire, though. His character was much more interesting, and I wish he could have been in the movie more. I absolutely loved the climactic sequence, but the film continues on for too long after that. Blanchett's big revelation at the end feels rather anticlimactic.

I went in to see this movie with expectations relatively low . The company I was in had dragged me to see INLAND EMPIRE which I am on record as saying was the worst movie I have paid to see . It should also be remembered that this movie had a very limited release both sides of the pond which considering has an Oscar winning director and three big names in the cast is not a good sign , so I went in with fairly low expectations

Perhaps my low expectations worked in the film's favour because it's a very effective film noir/ political thriller . Soderberg has brought a metonym to the story . He directs in monochrome and has mixed his own filmed material with stock footage of a devastated Berlin . Remember all those old movies where someone is driving a car and it's painfully obvious that it's filmed on a studio set with back projection ? Well there's a scene featuring Toby McGuire and George Clooney in a jeep where the same technique is used . The film also contains a title sequence straight out of the 1940s and has scenes with an overlong shot duration same as film from yesteryear

Unfortunately by doing this Soderbergh draws attention to the fact that Paul Attanasio's screenplay wasn't written in the 40s because there's a sex scene and several uses of the F word . If you're making a film that's a homage to 1940s cinema shouldn't you go the whole hog and write a screenplay in the same manner ? Hasn't the producer shot himself in the foot ? You'll be left scratching your head wondering why sex and bad language has been included

Still it's a minor complaint and one that doesn't destroy the movie which has a plot and if you had no idea that Cate Blanchett has been cast as Lena Brandt then you'd genuinely believe that her character was played by a European actress . Blanchett is the best actress in the world today and the fact that she wasn't Oscar nominated is another symptom that the annual academy awards are becoming more and more worthless . Tobey McGuire as Tully is considered less effective mainly because he has a sex scene which brought the cry from a couple of my cinema companions " That under no circumstances should spidey be seen to have sex " but seeing as they were both females I'm sure they were upset that George Clooney didn't get the opportunity to do some on screen horizontal jogging . Students of film studies will know the term " Impact aesthetics " and there's a great example of this when Captain Geismer studies a hundred dollar bill which will have you jumping out of your seat in fright

This is a fairly good thriller which while it isn't a film for everyone did hold my attention through its running time and despite it's somewhat retro formalist technique has me asking why it didn't get a wider release in both Britain and America ?

The War brought out some very interesting moral questions, some of which are hinted at in the classic-looking film. Was the use of the atomic bomb moral? Did the average German bear some measure of guilt for letting the Holocaust happen? And, most importantly, was it right for America to hide the sins of the German scientists to gain their knowledge? That is the key question running throughout the film.

Fans of classic film - those who love Casablanca, The Third Man, or A Foreign Affair - will appreciate the references to those films in the look and feel of this one.

Fans of George Clooney and Cate Blanchett will be thrilled at their performance, especially Blanchett's. Fans of Tobey Maguire may be shock at his anti-hero, but he really played the part well.

The look and feel of Steven Soderbergh's homage is brilliant, and the music of Thomas Newman made this an extremely enjoyable experience.

Greetings again from the darkness. Always the cameraman first, director Steven Soderbergh plays homage to the films of the 30's and 40's (especially "Casablanca") with this black and white telling of Joseph Kanon's novel.

Soderbergh is really the star here as his use of fixed camera and boom mic's combined with stunning lighting provide some insight into what film-making of that era and this era combined would be. As in the past, the B&W does more for some actors than others. George Clooney looks good (big surprise there) and Tobey Maguire looks impish and goofy. As a matter of fact, as fun as it is to see Batman and Spider-Man on camera together, Maguire played his character so over the top, that I was actually relieved at his road traveled.

Proving to be a near reincarnation of Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo, Cate Blanchett really shines here as the misguided heroine. Although she has few actual lines of dialogue, her "look" is so wonderful, it matters little. I kept waiting for her to break out in a song while in the tavern.

Decent support work provided the rarely seen Beau Bridges and veteran Jack Thompson are a nice touch and the actual news footage of the war parade and the summit with Truman, Stalin and Churchill is more than a bit creepy.

The only thing preventing the film from a higher rating is the almost lame, near boring story. We never connect with Clooney or Blanchett and feel like cheering when Maguire's lines mercifully end. A bit more of the Bridges character and an earlier explanation of Blanchett's motivation would have gone a long way in drawing the audience in.

Unforgivable pastiche of some infinitely better movies. George Clooney is a journalist sent to cover the 1945 Potsdam conference and in typical movie journalist fashion somehow manages to do no work whatsoever while being drawn into a web of mystery and intrigue. He's possibly the least effectual thriller hero of all time, more Holly Golightly than Holly Martins, and one of the few pleasures the film offers is wondering who will be the next character to jump him from behind and beat him senseless. Will it be the double amputee? The little boy with the bicycle? Absurdities abound, there's unforgivable misuse of narration and all the moody black-and-white photography in the world couldn't make up for a plot more full of holes than the buildings of post-War Berlin. All this could have been redeemed by a bit of chemistry between the leads or some lively pacing but everybody involved seems to be half asleep, possibly numbed into submission by the dreary sub-Elgarian score. The only good thing about this movie is that you leave with a greatly enhanced respect for the skill and sophistication of the bygone filmmakers whose work it so singularly fails to emulate.

This movie is an homage not only to the vocabulary of film noir , but also to its social and political genesis. Film Noir developed after World War II and was an outgrowth of both the cynicism that was generated by WW II because it turned out to need another war to be the war to end all wars.... and because of the enormous evil that World War II revealed in contradistinction to the sunny idealism of the American Project.

Film Noir of the 40's and 50's was a reaction to WW II, but those films themselves were always crime stories about naive men dragged into terrible circumstances through the lure of seductive, dangerous women. But they were never about the war itself or anything to do with the war itself. WWII movies were patriotic paeans to heroism like 30 Seconds over Tokyo or the common man like A Walk in the Sun or home front heroism like Mrs. Mininver. Indeed only Casablanca itself, as exemplified early on by Rick's character was suffused with some of the cynicism that we see in film noir, but the reason Casablance is beloved is because the cynicism melts away in the the understanding that there is something greater than one's own preservation.

What is wonderful about the Good German is that it is a Film Noir film about the War itself and also about war in general...then and now. The film and its concerns are not dated or meaningless, but very much of the moment.

The film also pays visual homage to other movies of the era, from the warm hearted cynicism of Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair with Jean Arthur as the parochial Congressperson (like in this film) and Marlene Dietrich as the dangerous vamp with a dark past. Roberto Rossellini's Germany:Year Zero, shot in postwar Berlin, shows how fear, deprivation and terror destroy the soul as ell as the body.

The Congressman is not just a boob but a participant in the propagation of evil and the Good American General of Beau Bridges is anything but good. Indeed, as we know now Americans protected Nazis who could help us in terms of confronting the next evil--Communism and Russia. And the story they tell about the V-2 rocket is true. The Germans and Werner van Braun used up the lives and caused the deaths of Jewish and other POW's slave labor to create and launch them and we, in terms of the American occupation and the incipient CIA aka the OSS, helped mass murderers to safety.

Even the lawyer Teitel, the man researching the Nuremberg Trials, whose sole purpose is to pursue Justice, can be compromised. Tobey Maguire was chosen to play the vicious, venal Tully because to most American audiences he, as Peter Parker, typifies the best of America. He is meant to be jarring to the audience. Lena, indeed is the vamp, but unlike old film noir like Out of the Past, she doesn't lead Jake on, Jake misleads himself about her. She is just a desperate woman struggling to survive.

Some would say this is a movie about moral ambiguities, but I think it's not that ambiguous. The filmmakers have cast judgment on some of our post war behavior and found it wanting.

The only romanticism in this movie is in the style, a valentine to the look of old movies; there is no romanticism in its view of America at war.

I read the book, then saw the movie and cannot for the life of me figure out why screenwriters/producers/directors, et al take a perfectly good story and bastardize it all to hell! The only resemblance between the book and movie is the title and the character's names. How disappointing the movie was, they combined subplots into the main plot, distorted the main characters and made it something it wasn't. Generally books are better than movies, granted, but in this case they aren't even in the same universe, not even a parallel one. The music was overkill, nothing like a 40's flick. Overall, a HUGE disappointment! Don't waste your time/money. Read the book instead!

"At least during the war you could tell who the bad guys were. They were the ones shooting at you." – George Clooney's character

This is a very grim little movie. Everyone is stepping over piles of rubble and living in partially bombed out buildings in 1947 Berlin.

It's done in black and white using all the techniques filmmakers used in the 1940s. You'll feel you're watching an actual 1940s movie – except it's almost entirely devoid of glamor or anything nice to look at (which filmmakers back then knew was essential to the movie-going experience).

Clooney is good -- yet not sexy. In fact the movie is devoid of any feeling except "My God what an awful time we're all having!"

Cate Blanchett is quite good, seeming a bit like Marlene Dietrich in certain close-ups. Tobey Maguire is cast against type and having a good time.

If you're looking to have some fun at this movie, you can start counting the 1940s film conventions Soderbergh experiments with. Or count the allusions to "Casablanca" (a much more satisfying and engaging film.)

I must say that I was disappointed in The Good German. I think the director did a nice job of creating a certain black and white style, reminiscent of old era movies. But I think he did too many things way too similar to some well-known classics. And this makes The Good German look like as if it is trying to be a black and white classic from old times and not an original in its own account. It makes the audience remember those other movies and you automatically associate The Good German with those other movies (that is, if you have seen them).

George Clooney plays an American officer Captain Jake who comes to post-war Germany and runs into his old flame Lena Brandt (Cate Blanchett). Soon, we find out that everybody (Russians and Americans) are after Lena's husband, Emil Brandt. According to her wife Lena, Emil is already dead. Captain Jake gets involved in the search for Emil Brandt and discovers some important facts.

I was also disappointed in the story. Either there were some unexplained things, some inconsistencies or I missed very important points because at the end I could not make sense of some things. George Clooney's character Jake, for some strange reason, never carries a gun. He is also a terrible fighter, he always gets beaten up. I honestly cannot think of one scene where he actually came out as the winner. No gun, no fighting skills - he is not your regular hero.

I also think Tobey Maguire was wrongly cast for this one. He is suited for roles where he is the nice, decent guy (He was perfect in Seabiscuit, The Cider House Rules and Wonder Boys) but he is so out of his element in this one. The only good thing about this movie, in my opinion, is Cate Blanchett. She is one of the finest actors in our time and she is a pleasure to watch. Her charisma on the screen is undeniable. And she makes a damn good German. She is just full of talent (see her also in Babel and The Notes on a Scandal).

I consider George Clooney, Cate Blanchett and Tobey Maguire three of the greatest stars of our time. Which makes it somewhat strange to see them in "The Good German". I thought that this was a fairly good movie, but I couldn't really tell whether the movie was simply paying homage to "Casablanca" or trying to imitate it. I felt that the movie's strength was showing what went on behind the scenes in post-war Berlin. Truman, Churchill and Stalin arrived claiming that they had no expansionist plans, when they in reality aimed to totally carve up Europe for the next forty years. And all the while, a future war was clearly brewing between the US and USSR. Not to mention the intrigue that the movie portrays.

So, I think that the movie is mostly good for that. It can't emulate the spirit of old-time film-making, but offers a chilling account of geopolitics, just like Clooney's previous movie "Syriana".

PS: Last year saw the release of "The Good German" and "The Good Shepherd", so David Letterman said that 2007 will see the release of "The Good German Shepherd".

This movie is a complete distortion of an excellent book, which I happened to read when I was in Berlin. Characters are combined, distorted and outright eliminated. Sure, it's filmed in film noir style. Big deal. Without character motivation, consistency and background, this film is a total waste. The acting was wooden, the music was melodramatic, the dialog was lame, and the plot was utterly incomprehensible as filmed. I urge anyone who has some interest in reading a great mystery that was researched thoroughly and written in a suspenseful way to get a copy and check it out. I loved this book - I hated the movie.

Give it a miss.

Steven Soderberg attempts to re-imagine the iconic noir films of the 1940's with "The Good German." With the old fashioned music score from Thomas Newman and the evocative black-and-white cinematography, he scores in spades. Unfortunately there are some frustrating elements that keep the film from becoming a perfect send-up of those classics.

The acting from Clooney and Blanchett are spot on for the time period the film invokes. Blanchett has received some flack for her thick German accent, and Clooney ridiculed for being wooden, but the styles fit for what Soderbergh was after. Sadly, for the first twenty minutes of the film, Soderbergh allows Tobey Maguire (poorly cast here) to go gonzo in a vain attempt by the non-actor to show he can do more than stare vapidly at the camera or appear all smarmy and misty eyed.

Soderbergh also makes the mistake of utilizing two of the worst elements of films from that time period: unnecessary voice-overs and stock footage to explain plot points when the screenwriter ran out of ideas or the producers cut back on the budget. Oddly, he also infuses a very modern use of sex and violence (though very brief) and profanity (seemingly for comic relief).

Overall, despite some of the distractions, the plot is often engrossing, and as stylish throw-back entertainment designed for the pleasure of movie buffs longing for the days of WWII era noir, the film makes the grade.

Steven Soderberg is a hit-or-miss director. Either his films are acclaimed and loved by most, or they're infamous and hated. Having read the reviews, and having heard the negative buzz, I was expecting a miss. Boy, was I pleasantly surprised.

The film was mesmerizing. Say what you will about it, you have to commend Soderbergh on his cinematography skills. Black and white hasn't looked this good since "The Man Who Wasn't There". It was so rich, with so many textures. I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. Definitely some of the best looking cinematography I've seen this year.

Also the score is great. It evokes just the right noir-ish atmosphere. The editing is crisp and clever. All of the technical elements of this movie are flawless.

I heard people complain about the story and the acting. I thought the acting was great. Clooney looks like he just came out of the 50's. He reminded me of Cary Grant. Cate Blanchett is perfect as the femme fatale. I can't think of any better casting choices for an old school film noir than these two.

I also thought the story was engaging, even though it was sometimes confusing. I loved the way the information was dispersed, and the fact that the film changes perspectives, and at different points it's narrated by different characters. Some of the revelations in the plot were really sophisticated.

Making this film the way it was made, using old school techniques, lighting, camera lenses, etc. was a gutsy move. I applaud Soderbergh for his experimentation. And I thin it's a successful one - it really feels like a 50's film noir classic. I wouldn't say it's Soderbergh's best film, but it's certainly one of his his most unique ones, and a return to form after a string of failures. I highly recommend it.

George Clooney has a penchant for black and white movies – it's as if he wanted to be a contemporary of Clark Gable. Thus we have admired George's handsome features in "Failsafe" and "Good Night and Good Luck", not to mention the positively weird washed out colour of his Gulf war story "Three Kings". Stephen Soderberg on the other hand is a stylish director who likes to change styles. Here the story, from Joseph Kanon's historical thriller, is set in Berlin in 1945, and Soderberg decided to film it in a studio with the techniques of the day – black and white photography, period studio lighting, back projection, fixed focus lenses, 1:1.66 aspect ratio and all the rest. He probably even told the film crew to say "Ready when you are, Mr Soderberg". In the case of one scene at the end he has lifted the whole setting from "Casablanca", and we have some underground stuff reminiscent of "The Third Man".

Cate Blanchette as Lena the femme fatale is certainly channeling Marlene Dietrich but George Clooney is no Humphrey Bogart or Clark Gable. In fact his Jacob Geismer gets beaten up and/or given a bum steer by just about everyone he meets, starting with his driver the preposterous Corporal Tully (Tobey McGuire) who is not only shacked up with Geismer's pre-war love Lena but is on chatting terms with a Russian General. Fortunately Tully is eliminated fairly early on before the improbability of his character starts to bite.

Soderberg has re-created the feel of the defeated city, and the euphoria of the victors, who sip champagne in the ruins as the future of Europe is decided. The food queues of staving Germans contrast with the groaning food tables at the Potsdam Conference, which Geisman is supposed to be reporting on for the "New Republic". Instead he is scrambling through the rubble, looking for a man who is supposed to be dead, Lena's husband, a person of interest to both the American and Russian authorities.

Geisman you could describe as ineffectively noble – he has picked a fight with city hall which he cannot win. German scientists are going to work for the Americans come what may. Everyone else is either on the make or just trying to survive. By film noir standards, Geisman is a bit of a wuss.

As for Soderberg, he has produced a kind of American Dogme film -something more than a parody but something less than a tribute. The staging is contrived, the plot is decidedly clunky, the hero feeble, and some of the other parts unbelievable. The whole thing reminds me of a kid up a tree, about to fall out, yelling at his mother "Look what I can do Mummy". At least he keeps it to 90 minutes, like the period features he is referring to.