The Good German

I really, really wanted to like this new feature film from director Steven Soderbergh, partially because it stars the luminous Cate Blanchett, and more importantly because it strives to be an uber-faithful homage to my favourite film style, noir.

Set in a ravaged Berlin in 1945, before hostilities have ended with Japan but after Hitler's ignominious death, The Good German employs a balanced blend of archival footage and newly-shot scenes to tell a story about guilt, love and double-crossing. It stars George Clooney as journalist-turned-honorary-Captain Jake Geismer, nominally in Berlin to cover the Potsdam conference, where Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt met for the last time as allies, to divide post-war Europe among themselves. Really, he is back in town to look for his lost love, Lena Brandt (an effortlessly world-weary Blanchett).

Disembarking at the airport with Congressman Breimer (an almost unrecognisable Jack Thompson) Jake is picked up by his driver, the unscrupulous, bullying Patrick Tully (a badly-cast Tobey Maguire, who acts like he is in another film altogether) a soldier turned black marketeer who proceeds to steal Jake's wallet as soon as he drops him at his hotel; only appropriate given that, as we soon learn, he has also stolen - or perhaps borrowed would be a beter word - Jake's missing girlfriend, Lena.

Soon enough Tully turns up dead. Who killed him - the Russians, the Americans, the other Americans, or are there other forces at play? What is the secret Lena is hiding? And really, does anybody care?

Sadly, at least with this cinematic adaptation of Joseph Kanon's novel, the answer is no. By striving so hard to re-create the look and feel of classic 1940's films, using everything from old-fashioned lenses and microphones to a heavy-handed pastiche of the period's lighting styles, Soderbergh has created a film that's almost as lifeless as Clooney's performance. Instead of being thrilling, The Good German is stilted. Characters are either thinly drawn (Clooney) or unbelievable (Maguire). The oh-so-ironic inclusion of sex, violence and swearing is jarring, while the knowing nods to everything from Polanski's neo-noir Chinatown to Casablanca detract from the unnecessarily complex plot at the heart of the film.

Too, despite taking the high moral ground on the issue of war crimes and guilt, The Good German fails to explore such issues in any depth.

Basically what I'm saying is ignore this film - watch Casablanca instead.