Susan Granger’s review of “The Good German” (Warner Bros.)
Intrigued with the black-and-white movies of the 1940s, Steven Soderbergh creates a shadowy espionage thriller that’s more of a film-school exercise than a satisfactory cinematic experience.
When Jake Geismer (George Clooney), an Army war correspondent, returns to post-World War II Berlin to cover the Postdam Conference (in which Joseph Stalin, Harry Truman and Winston Churchill decided how to administer the defeated Nazi Germany), he’s assigned a motor-pool driver, Tully (Tobey Maguire), a sleazy wheeler/dealer with ties to the thriving black market who, inadvertently, leads him to find an old girlfriend, Lena Brandt (Cate Blanchett). It seems Lena’s husband Emil (Christian Oliver) is one of the German rocket scientists whom both the Russians and the Americans covet for their escalating arms race. Sly, secretive and mysterious, Lena is a “femme fatale,” an expert manipulator – as Jake soon discovers – who is desperately trying to escape her past.
Problem is: there’s little chemistry between Clooney and Blanchett, and the still-adolescent-looking Maguire is seriously miscast as the opportunistic romantic rival.
Loosely based on the novel by Joseph Kanon, it’s adapted for the screen as a film noir by Paul Attanasio. For period authenticity, Steven Soderbergh utilizes stock footage, including some Berlin background scenes used for Billy Wilder’s “A Foreign Affair” (1948), while Philip Messina’s production design, Louise Frogley’s costumes and Thomas Newman’s score complete the time warp. As for cinematographer Peter Andrews and film editor Mary Ann Bernard, they’re Soderbergh’s pseudonyms – because it’s his show, all the way, including a rainy ending at the Berlin airport that tries to duplicate the conclusion of “Casablanca,” except for Claude Raines. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Good German” is a stylishly self-conscious 6. It’s a stilted artifice, a mildly engrossing melodrama.
