Review of The Good German (2006) by Phil S — 05 Jan 2009

The nostalgia piece is always a strange one to call. On the one hand, one must consider how acurately the director has managed to replicate, homage or parody their source material and one the other is the question as to how well the picture will sit with today's audiences. Thus they are at best a mixed blessing, some good (Good Night and Good Luck; The Last King of Scotland), some bad (The Man Who Wasn't There) and some which were simply uninspired.

Falling into this rather drab third category alongside such other disappointments as The Black Dahlia and Zodiac is Steven Soderbergh's wartime thriller The Good German. Insofar as being a stylistic recreation of a classic era film noir, Soderbergh's film fairs extremely well in the way it traverses green screen, stage sets and stock footage with only a minimum of mess. The story however, makes for very heavy viewing and at times it can become very difficult to tell what is going on or maintain interest without some degree of personal effort.

As for performances, whilst Clooney and Blanchett recieve billing for their largely analogue efforts, the real credit should go to Tobey Macguire. Despite having the shortest screen time of the three main cast members his performance makes the biggest impact, with the baby-faced actor coming across as a mix of Mickey Rooney in Quicksand and Jake Gyllenhaal in Jarhead. Considering his usual tendancy to play pacifistic, playful nerds, its good to see MacGuire break the cycle and try to play the role of a man's man.

Inevitably however, his brutish Corporal Tully winds up dead in a typical Maltese Falcon twist leaving Clooney's bungling military Bogart to pick the pieces and go barking up the wrong tree.

Performance aside, whilst the drive for authenticity is indeed admirable from Soderbergh is indeed admirable, it is at time grossly overdone. Among its biggest criticisms is that The Good German smacks of Casablanca, even complete with a seedy cocktail bar where the piano player could quite easily be imagined playing "As Time Goes By". The film's climax wreaks so heavily of the 1940s classic that at times you expect Clooney to utter the words "Here's looking at you kid." When all is said and done, the only definate thing that can be said of The Good German is that it exemplifies what happens when a film is all style and little substance. Make no mistake the story is a good one and the film is worth a look, but you are advised to proceed with caution because this is in no way as good as Downfall or Schindler's List.