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THE GOOD GERMAN Send This Review to a Friend
An effort to make a Hollywood-style film noir set in immediate post-war Berlin fizzles. Writer-director Steven Soderbergh, basing the film on Joseph Kanon’s novel, comes up with a result that is all style and no substance.
George Clooney is not especially interesting here as journalist Jake Geismer, who returns to Berlin in search of an old flame, Lena Brandt, a femme fatale played by Cate Blanchett, Marlene Dietrich style. She has a past to hide.
Tobey Maguire is on hand as Tully, a corrupt American soldier who is wheeling and dealing in the black market, along with just about everyone else taking advantage of a Berlin in ruins. It turns out there are bigger stakes, the hunt for a man desperately sought by the Americans and the Russians. Lena is the gal in the middle of the muddle.
The screenplay by Paul Attanasio is pretentiously geared to Soderbergh’s attempt to re-create the sort of movie as it would have been done in the noir period, including shooting it in black and white. But “The Good German” is otherwise bereft of ideas and events that can evolve us either emotionally or intellectually. It is an exercise and no more, despite its star cast. Forget Blanchett in this one. See her instead in the much more interesting new film “Notes on a Scandal.” A Warner Brothers Pictures release.
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