Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

castala As it happened many times in film history, a film made by great artists, written from a book based on historical events, is ending in a tasteless pudding. Steven Soderbergh made many good films, often a tribute to many genres like "film noir", science fiction, cops and robbers, etc. We're having a nice cast in this film, and none of them should be proud of the result. It's tough not liking Clooney and Blanchett. and here, they are a strange couple. Probably because their relation in the story started before the Second World War, and we don't know much of it. It's not helping to try to understand where their love affair is fitting in all this complex historical scheme. Here, I guess the problem is the screenplay, based on Joseph Kanon's novel which counts more than 500 pages. It's complicated to make a story in a film lasting 105 minutes. The music is nice, the cinematography all in black and white is also very beautiful. But when the film is ending, you just try to figure out what went wrong. Apart the screenplay, we should also ask why choosing Blanchett to play this character. Her German husband seems too young for her, her accent is not credible. And her eyes are covered with dark lenses, which are giving the actress a strange look, like if she's not feeling well. Maybe she did. It's not completely bad, but after watching it, it's easy to understand why it was a commercial flop, probably explaining why Clooney and Soderbergh had to make "Ocean's 13".

Scarecrow-88 Steven Soderbergh is one of my favorite directors because he has made so many different types of films and the stories and situations involving the characters are of such diversity. In this homage to the war dramas of Hollywood yore has Clooney's war correspondent returning to war-torn Berlin after Hitler's fall, finding that his life could be in danger after he starts to pursue the truth behind the murder of his "driver" (Tobey Maguire, quite a douchebag), known for his black market dealings in the devastated city. Clooney realizes that a former "secretary" (and flame, the two having an affair) is linked to Maguire "romantically" (basically she's a lay he likes to bully). She is the driving force behind his nosing around. It seems the Russians and Americans are interested in Blanchett's supposedly dead husband, a man who worked for a Nazi rocket expert who enslaved Jews to build rockets in a mountain factory. Well directed in B&W on the Warner Bros sets that provide a evocative reflection of the good ole days (I kept thinking about Wilder's A Foreign Affair while watching it as well as Casablanca), the plot didn't necessarily blow me away and the performances are okay if not spectacular. Star power does mean something (Clooney, Blanchett, and Maguire) and their being photographed in a moody period in the gloomy damaged Berlin setting using the "classic style" (the lighting, melodramatic score, and flawed characters with their secrets and sins) certainly is a drawing reason to see The Good German. Blanchett portrays her character as guarded, protective of what she feels and hides behind this cold exterior Clooney is desperate to fracture so that he can see her humanity…but what she hides, some act she committed after Clooney left Berlin as Hitler rose in power before Berlin would be ravaged by war, could be too horrible to admit. Maguire is quite a loathsome creep in this film, and seeing him in this light might be a surprise to many of his fans, used to his more subdued, less hostile parts. The plot builds the mystery of "who is Emile Brandt?" and "what does everyone want with him?" with Clooney motivated to find out due to his emotional involvement with Blanchett. The use of profanity and more provocative subject matter (use of prostitution in Berlin a means to afford food, such an example) sets this apart from the classics The Good German is relatable to. I think as an exercise in "how to shoot a homage to the good stuff" by the director the film is an attractive diversion (he imitates the films inspiring him especially well), the plot never really catches fire. The "big secret" and how Blanchett can get herself a better life out of Berlin leaves much to be desired. Clooney, throughout, is treated as a patsy and his naiveté regarding Blanchett (we don't ever see what she might have been like prior to Hitler's rise and so this leaves her character an icy sort not so easy to like) really doesn't reflect well as he continues to face one problem after another. The Potsdam Peace conference is the backdrop for all the goings-on. America's infiltration in Berlin, and their secrecy as Clooney continues to get the run-around, is of significance to the plot as everyone has something concealed (one great scene shows Clooney following Beau Bridges to his office to talk Emile Brandt, with a number of key figures eyeing him with direct interest).

citizen-caveman A gumshoe story set in a desolate, immediate post-war Berlin rather than the more usual sunny and prosperous L.A. From the first frame the film mimics the look-and-feel of a 1940's movie. After Tully (Tobey Maguire) picks up Jake Geismer (George Clooney) at Berlin Airport a wipe signals the transition to the next scene driving through the bomb-shattered streets of Berlin. CGI makes anything look real. So the obvious choice to dispense with green- screening in favour of a projected backdrop of grainy film must be deliberate. All of which gives an ambiance of a 1940's movie, besides a sense of time and place. Some scenes, however, don't observe the sensitivities of the 1940 – anal sex most notably. Being a detective story the plot line is inevitably murky and enigmatic. Coupling this with a love triangle makes the plot line more complex still. Yet, it remains sufficiently comprehensible to be intriguing rather than baffling. That said, it's no lazy watch, you need to pay attention and make mental note of what's happening. Performances are good all round. Tobey Maguire's portrayal of Tully, the baby-faced GI who knows everything, is polished and initially stands out the most because he plays such a brash character compared to the rest of the cast. George Clooney comes over as world-weary and worldly wise – a sharp contrast to Tully. Except when Geismer stumbles across Lena Brandt (Cate Blanchett) the old flame he's been looking for. The best line in the film is spoken by an extra. Geismer is watching two youths at the water's edge playing with a model boat. The unnamed officer walks up from behind and comments, 'kids, two months ago they were shooting at us.' This sort of thing throughout sustains the film's sense of time and place. The Good German is a nice piece of teamwork that pulls together the screenplay, cinematography, acting, et al to make a very watchable film.

Tabarnouche Believable period decor, urban post-war detailing, B&W shots set up to mimic 1940s camera work — and especially Cate Blanchett's fine, shadowy lineaments and her credible spoken German — these may save unsuspecting viewers from a pernicious slide into the Quagmire of Despond.Until mid-movie, that is. The dull tenterhooks on which I was to writhe from that point forward proved ineffectual against mind fog. It thickened with each random plot twist. My finger inched toward, but never found, Fast-forward, Pause or Self-Immolate.It were as though the low light and the absence of color had leached timing and savoir-faire from the The Good German set. (Blanchett, however, apparently knew to wear light- and color-fast threads that prevented her aura from dimming.)But why did Soderbergh and Attanasio not huddle behind camera, where they might improvise a remedial script? Had they heeded their roiling instincts prompting them to demur, the rewrite they'd have produced on the fly might have gone down as one of the most inspired saves in the annals of film.Would it have been so difficult, for example, to have had Tobey Maguire dismembered in the first ten minutes after carelessly stepping on live unexploded ordnance? His demise would have been supremely satisfying — and not all that gory in fifty-some shades of grey.Rejiggering The Good German would have required a bit more finagling than that, though nothing too fancy. The percussive force of the deus ex machina Maguire explosion could have thrust Clooney backward into a rubble pit, leaving him dazed and blessedly mute. Whatever acting talents his fans impute to him would only have been heightened by a 90- minute stint of pantomime.The wispy plot line of The Good German is tangled beyond the ability of most mortals to unknot. Viewers would have had fewer misgivings about the writers if Clooney had played an aphasiac. What ever is he trying to tell us? we'd have wondered. Instead, puzzlement gnawed: Why does this cuddlesome cipher keep striving to come off as gauche, vacuous and witless?Clooney's overacting flame-out — one can think of B&W screwball comedies with more subtle leads — ensured that the film's deficiencies would scorch its assets. That need not have been so. Few would publicly deny that Clooney has the range needed to play a speechless war casualty. Had he been thus retasked, Soderbergh's strained attempts at cinematic authenticity would not have stood out so starkly.Even a dumb Clooney, however, ought to have known better than to let his character be written into a fumbling, gratuitous "tribute" to Casablanca toward the end. But — surprise! — he acquiesced. That aesthetic insult proved to be the film's coup de grâce.Finally, mercifully, as the credits began rolling by, my arms slowly unwrapped and allowed my head to rise and inhale freely again.Even if someone just gave birth to you, life's too short. You'd be better off spending two hours at the Lotto machine.