The Good German
Length: Single
Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures Distribution
Rated: R
Website: http://thegoodgerman.warnerbros.com/
Release Date: 2007-01-18
Cast: George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Tobey Maguire, Robin Weigert, Dave Power
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Screenwriter: Paul Attanasio, Joseph Kanon
Music Score: Michael Zainer, Bill Bernstein, Thomas Newman
WorkNameSort: Good German, The
Our Rating: 2.00
With an attention to detail suggestive of a Star Wars fanatic making the ultimate Millennium Falcon model, Steven Soderbergh attempts to create an artifact out of the specifics of the noir genre he periodically revisits when he runs out of ideas. Using only the lenses, effects, acting techniques, aspect ratio and mise-en-scène of his reductionist notion of 1940s and ’50s black-and-white noir cinema, it features George Clooney as a hard-boiled/headed war correspondent stationed in postwar Berlin, where he locates and falls in love again with old flame Cate Blanchett, his generic equal as a tormented/duplicitous fatale/ex-sort of-Nazi. Although Tobey Maguire offers a delightfully amoral young soldier and Robin Weigert (Deadwood‘s Calamity Jane) a cheerily opportunistic whore, The Good German is a self-serving act of fetishistic virtual embalming, with all the liveliness that description implies.
This article appears in Jan 17-23, 2007.