The Good German (***)

? Continuing his quest to make at least one of every type of movie, Steven Soderbergh turns his attention to the World War II mystery-thriller, utilizing black-and-white photography to give his adaptation of Joseph Kanon’s novel the look of a period film. George Clooney, working with Soderbergh for the fifth time, plays a war correspondent/army captain in bombed-out Berlin at the time of the Potsdam Conference. Tobey McGuire, playing a soldier serving as the journalist’s seemingly chipper driver, plays against type by turning out to be a black marketeer with a wide nasty streak. Cate Blanchett plays a German Jew, known well to both men, whose has managed to do what she needed to do to survive until 1945.

+ Soderbergh is always attentive to detail and has obviously seen a lot of film noir and other old movies, especially Casablanca, whose plot this somewhat recalls. Even the screen wipes used to transition between scenes and the noticeably fake rear projection in the driving scenes are reminiscent of an older style of filmmaking. So is Thomas Newman’s score. Only the language—more explicit than the censors once allowed—is updated. It’s perhaps more true to life, but jarring in such a context. Blanchett commands every scene she’s in, and it’s her character that the story turns on.

- The obvious comparison to Casablanca (whose famous ending is visually replicated here) is instructive. Both stories are about idealism in places where cynicism is the mood of the moment. Both are anchored by the memory of a past affair. Even though it’s conveyed by just a couple of brief flashbacks, the romantic back story in the older movie is enough that you feel as sucker-punched as Bogart when he and Ingrid Bergman are separated. The captain’s affair with his onetime protégé is not rendered with such sentimentality. There is some smart dialogue here, but no “Here’s looking at you, kid.” Replacing Bogart’s weary stoicism is Clooney’s journalistic objectivity, which is not quite the same thing, and is shed more quickly. The journalist is as much an audience stand-in as a full-fledged character. Thus I found myself less invested emotionally with the movie as I might have. Still, being negatively compared to an all-time classic is no great insult, and the thread of the plot still pulled me along, especially in the second half.

= *** On a scale of 1 to 10, I give it a 6 for the characters, an 8 for the mystery, a 4 for the romantic aspect, and a 10 for the look and feel.

IMDb link