Review of The Good German (2006) by Kacper K — 26 Jul 2008

The film (and by extension, the director) suffers from a love of itself and thus has a near-incoherent plot line and very shallow character development. Granted the cinematography will remind you of Casablanca and all our romantic perceptions of that era, but there is little in the way of emotional connection and empathy for the joys and sorrows of the main actors, Clooney and Blanchett.

Ironically, given that Casablanca is over 60 years old, I feel closer to Bogey and Ingrid Bergman than the leads in this film. Worse still, Tobey Maguire is irritating and unconvincing in his role - perhaps typecasting of the Spiderman series leads me to this conclusion.

It was a relief to me (and almost certainly everyone else) that his time on screen is relatively limited. All in all, for a movie with such potential and apparent marketing hype, its substance is pretty weak.