The Good German (2006)

Brilliant and touching

A Masterpiece!

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

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".

Absolutely wretched and self consciously arty this lame exercise in vanity tries to recreate the feeling of great 40's films but with supposedly modern dialogue. Apparently this means the actors swear every other word, which doesn't make it contemporary just dull and lacking in imagination. Cate Blanchett is okay although she has certainly been better elsewhere, but George Clooney is arch and affected while Tobey Maguire, usually a fine actor when properly cast is completely miscast, out of his depth and awful. Some of the cinematography is striking but that's hardly enough to make this turgid, poorly directed misfire worth sitting through.A dog from the word go!

Never have I seen a worse blight on film than this movie. This is a blatant ripoff of Casablanca, or rather a movie trying to be Casablanca, ripping off the poster exactly, even the lettering and style.I rented this film, hoping to see a period thriller piece. I was more interested in hearing the plot. This movie has the worst plot, and spoilers, the plot doesn't go anywhere, it just shoves in this piece of rubbish on building weapons and killing scientists. Soderbergh tries to do the old filmmaking tricks from the 40s, but they just fall flat and look stupid. When he does the old zoom in on a letter, with the black boxes around it like in the 40s films, you can't even read what the letter says, it's that terrible.It's a waste of time, don't bother with it, even with the cast, Toby Maguire is terrible, Clooney isn't anything special and everyone else is just forgettable.I'm surprised more people don't like this film for what it represents.

In the past ten years or so Steven Soderbergh has become a director who does what he wants, when he wants. He makes the film he wants to make and he does it exactly how he feels it needs to be done, no matter how unorthodox or inconvenient. In 2004 he made Ocean's Twelve, the sequel to one of his biggest blockbuster successes. Then in 2005 he made the film Bubble, a small independently released film with no professional actors. Then in 2006 he picks his stars back up and makes The Good German with George Clooney and Cate Blanchett. And yet he does this film in a completely unconditional way that somewhat negates the star power that the film has.The Good German is about an army general who is visiting Berlin shortly after World War II. What begins as a routine mission quickly becomes a complicated murder mystery involving his mistress and his driver. The plot of the film is straightforward enough, but what makes this film different is the significant style choices that Soderbergh makes. The Good German is essentially an homage to classic film noir and war time thrillers. Soderbergh does everything in his power to make this film seem as if it were made in the 40's or 50's and if it didn't have all of the big names attached to it I might believe it really was that old. Sadly, this film goes all the way for style, and leaves behind all of its substance. Thus, after we become acquainted with the film's style we are left to watch a dull and hollow story unfold, never becoming more than a typical Hollywood junk film trying to be something it's not.The Good German is a film that deserves all the style points it gets. I commend Soderbergh for his efforts in making this pastiche film with the nuances he wanted. He got it just right, but to the extent where it takes away from everything else about the film (i.e. the story). This is a story that goes nowhere and is not interesting or compelling in the slightest. It's a mystery without mystery. I never found myself excited about finding out the answers to the questions the film raises. It is sloppy in its delivery of a hard hitting story and lazy in the way it develops said story. I tried my best to get into the film towards the beginning, but quickly found myself losing interest. Also, the film never improves. It's climax is terribly underwhelming and its conclusion is completely forgettable. From start to finish The Good German is all style and no substance.If you're a Soderbergh fan I might recommend this if you truly care about seeing everything the man has ever done. If you're a mild fan then there are plenty of other films from him that you should check out. This is definitely way towards the bottom in my Soderbergh recommendation list. Not including the film's acute style, it's easily one of his poorest efforts.