George Clooney has a penchant for black and white movies it's as if he wanted to be a contemporary of Clark Gable. Thus we have admired George's handsome features in "Failsafe" and "Good Night and Good Luck", not to mention the positively weird washed out colour of his Gulf war story "Three Kings". Stephen Soderberg on the other hand is a stylish director who likes to change styles. Here the story, from Joseph Kanon's historical thriller, is set in Berlin in 1945, and Soderberg decided to film it in a studio with the techniques of the day black and white photography, period studio lighting, back projection, fixed focus lenses, 1:1.66 aspect ratio and all the rest. He probably even told the film crew to say "Ready when you are, Mr Soderberg". In the case of one scene at the end he has lifted the whole setting from "Casablanca", and we have some underground stuff reminiscent of "The Third Man".
Cate Blanchette as Lena the femme fatale is certainly channeling Marlene Dietrich but George Clooney is no Humphrey Bogart or Clark Gable. In fact his Jacob Geismer gets beaten up and/or given a bum steer by just about everyone he meets, starting with his driver the preposterous Corporal Tully (Tobey McGuire) who is not only shacked up with Geismer's pre-war love Lena but is on chatting terms with a Russian General. Fortunately Tully is eliminated fairly early on before the improbability of his character starts to bite.
Soderberg has re-created the feel of the defeated city, and the euphoria of the victors, who sip champagne in the ruins as the future of Europe is decided. The food queues of staving Germans contrast with the groaning food tables at the Potsdam Conference, which Geisman is supposed to be reporting on for the "New Republic". Instead he is scrambling through the rubble, looking for a man who is supposed to be dead, Lena's husband, a person of interest to both the American and Russian authorities.
Geisman you could describe as ineffectively noble he has picked a fight with city hall which he cannot win. German scientists are going to work for the Americans come what may. Everyone else is either on the make or just trying to survive. By film noir standards, Geisman is a bit of a wuss.
As for Soderberg, he has produced a kind of American Dogme film -something more than a parody but something less than a tribute. The staging is contrived, the plot is decidedly clunky, the hero feeble, and some of the other parts unbelievable. The whole thing reminds me of a kid up a tree, about to fall out, yelling at his mother "Look what I can do Mummy". At least he keeps it to 90 minutes, like the period features he is referring to.
Cate Blanchette as Lena the femme fatale is certainly channeling Marlene Dietrich but George Clooney is no Humphrey Bogart or Clark Gable. In fact his Jacob Geismer gets beaten up and/or given a bum steer by just about everyone he meets, starting with his driver the preposterous Corporal Tully (Tobey McGuire) who is not only shacked up with Geismer's pre-war love Lena but is on chatting terms with a Russian General. Fortunately Tully is eliminated fairly early on before the improbability of his character starts to bite.
Soderberg has re-created the feel of the defeated city, and the euphoria of the victors, who sip champagne in the ruins as the future of Europe is decided. The food queues of staving Germans contrast with the groaning food tables at the Potsdam Conference, which Geisman is supposed to be reporting on for the "New Republic". Instead he is scrambling through the rubble, looking for a man who is supposed to be dead, Lena's husband, a person of interest to both the American and Russian authorities.
Geisman you could describe as ineffectively noble he has picked a fight with city hall which he cannot win. German scientists are going to work for the Americans come what may. Everyone else is either on the make or just trying to survive. By film noir standards, Geisman is a bit of a wuss.
As for Soderberg, he has produced a kind of American Dogme film -something more than a parody but something less than a tribute. The staging is contrived, the plot is decidedly clunky, the hero feeble, and some of the other parts unbelievable. The whole thing reminds me of a kid up a tree, about to fall out, yelling at his mother "Look what I can do Mummy". At least he keeps it to 90 minutes, like the period features he is referring to.