Allied

If it weren’t for the botoxed Brad Pitt and several scenes that reeked of Hollywood, where for instance a couple makes love in the midst of a sandstorm in Morroco and Marion Cotillard then gives birth during an air raid of London, I would be literally excited about the movie. I haven’t seen such great war atmosphere for a long time, which actually is no wonder. Robert Zemeckis is a great director and he’s truly great at creating high-quality atmospheres. The ending of the movie was also literally aced, but I guess Angelina Jolie probably wouldn’t share my excitement… (03/09/2017)

Knight doesn’t write bad stories and when he pays homage to Hollywood classics like Casablanca, he manages to add an element of modernity. Pitt’s cold fish Max Vatan melting in the arms of Marion Cotillard in action scenes is still an effective killing machine and the spying game is much more convincing than usual. Details, details and more details. Zemeckis has made a strong genre piece with abundant gleaming camera shots and, the occasional feeble special effect here and there doesn’t matter in the slightest. A quality romantic wartime drama about family, love and good people in a difficult situation. Ideal for a date. (01/30/2017)

Neither great nor terrible. As usual, the enemies run straight into the fire of the heroes, who are then able to leave the scene without any consequences. Then the film morphed into some sort of a romantic drama with war used only as a backdrop to the story. The situation was saved by the ending. A happy one would have clearly been unfortunate in this case. (04/09/2017)

Robert Zemeckis is considered a visionary, but at the core, he is and will always be old-fashioned. And that old-fashionedness is insidious, because Allied pretend to be a Moroccan war trifle for a while, later transforms through intense action interludes into an honest drama, and then doesn't recoil from flirting with a good amount of tension. Over time, additional layers of storytelling are added, and in the end, there remains a taste of a pleasantly genre-defying spectacle that makes one forget about the overly drawn-out pace of the first act. (01/26/2017)

Emotionally, it's a bit of a cold story that ironically, especially at first, moves quite slowly, but Zemeckis does repair his reputation after the botched The Walk, as Allied may not work as well as a romantic drama, but it certainly works as a WWII spy film. Brad Pitt, of course, as has been the case for the last 10 years, is appropriately wonderful, and Marion Cotillard is traditionally, by eye contact, properly inscrutable. It's not an exemplary hit, but it's filmmaking from a filmmaker who rarely gets it really wrong. It has all the classic filmmaking frameworks that meet at least the standard, plus an absolutely lavish form with at least three over-the-top sequences and a beautifully stylized Morocco set to Silvestri's music. (01/28/2017)