Zwartboek (Black Book)

When a friend of mine first suggested that I watch this film I was wary. James has a way of finding off-beat cinematic gems, and had suggested such fine films as The Wind that Shakes the Barley, The Last King of Scotland and Downfall. However, he had suggested such dogs as Big Nothing and The Fountain, so his track record wasn’t perfect. So when I saw that this film was directed by Paul Verhoeven, whose films include Basic Instinct, Showgirls and Starship Troopers, I was a bit wary. That coupled with the title of the film made me think I was about to watch something lurid and trashy. I found the exact opposite.

The film takes place in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II. The central figure of the movie is Rachel (Carice van Houten) who is a young Jewish girl hiding from the Nazis. After her hiding place is bombed, and the family housing her is killed, she contacts some resistance fighters who plan to smuggle her and others out of the country and into safety. A German patrol boat spies her escape vessel and kills everyone on board. Only Rachel escapes.

Rachel joins the underground resistance, and assumes the name Ellis deVries. She then begins working for the Nazi SS and attempts to seduce the hauptsturmführer in an attempt to get him to free the son of one of the underground resistance leaders. She discovers that those who were murdered on the boat the night she escaped were set up by a spy who was tipping off the Germans and profiting from it. She also learns that the members of the underground movement are not the only ones who are betraying one another: The Germans are stabbing each other in the back. Her relationship with the hauptsturmführer takes a serious turn and she finds herself caught between the two sides, and after she is discovered by the Germans she realizes that she is being pursued by both sides, who both view her as a traitor.

The story begins in 1956, when Rachel bumps into one of her old girlfriends from the war. The rest of the story is told in flashback, and even though I knew that Rachel would eventually escape, I was still gripped by the tension built up throughout the film. This movie had more twists and turns than you could shake a stick at, and by the end of the film I was beginning to think that no one could be trusted. I wanted so badly to be able to figure it out before the end, but I couldn’t. It was too well wrought.

This film, true to Verhoeven’s film making was complete with several nude scenes, and is not for the faint of heart. It is violent. However, the acting was superb, the story was compelling, and this was one of the best films I have seen this year. Out of 10 I would rate this film as a 10.

(Next film for review: Downfall)

Flyboys

For my first film review I have chosen Flyboys, directed by Tony Bill. If you come back often you will find that I don't give high reviews of most films. As my mother in law likes to point out, I am a snot when it comes to movies, and I believe that really great films are few and far between. Most of what comes out nowadays is garbage. And yet I still watch...

Going into this film I expected to find a warm and fuzzy Memphis Belle type of story, set in World War I instead of WWII. I wasn’t disappointed. Overall I enjoyed the film despite the predictability and some of the hokey plot devices.

When the American pilots first join the French air fighting force, they are introduced to Reed Cassidy (Martin Henderson), the salty veteran of the fighting force. He has a pet lion and treats the new pilots poorly. After ten seconds of screen time for Cassidy I knew that several things would happen: Cassidy would form a bond with Rawlings (James Franco), Cassidy would die heroically in an air battle with the Germans and Rawlings would avenge Cassidy’s death by killing the pilot who killed Cassidy. I was right on all three accounts.

Rawlings begins a love relationship with a young French girl, and rescues her from the invading Germans. I thought this was to be an over-wrought love story. But here I was thrown a curveball. After promising to find her in Paris, Rawlings fails to make contact with her at the end of the film, and returns home to the US without her. This was one redeeming plotline: the guy doesn’t always get the girl.

The battle scenes in this film were well thought out and executed. There was only one scene that disappointed me. At one point Rawlings sees that one of his fellow pilots has crash landed in the middle of a trench battle. Rawlings conveniently finds a place close to the battle field where he can land, manages to run between the opposing armies’ lines to his friend’s downed plane without being shot, frees his friend, whose hand is pinned under the wing, and gets both himself and his comrade back to the trench without being shot, though a French soldier who comes to assist is shot to pieces. It was just a little bit too much. There was one great part to this scene, however. Rawlings is unable to free his buddy, so he employs a shovel and hacks the man’s hand off in order to save him. Anytime a man has his hand whacked by a spade, something is going well.

It was nice to see a film that glorified the dogfight pioneers of World War I. We’ve seen many movies about WWII air battles (Belle, Pearl Harbor, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Catch 22, Tora Tora Tora, The Tuskegee Airmen), and I am fascinated by WWII aircraft (Spitfires, P-51s, B-17s, P-38s). But there hasn’t been anything worthwhile about the birth of dog fighting until now.

James Franco was very good in his role as Rawlings. He proved here that he is just more than a pretty face, and that he can handle the role, instead of supporting roles, like in the Spiderman movies. But the guy who stole the show was Jean Reno, who played captain Renault. Reno has appeared in such films as Ronin, French Kiss, Mission: Impossible, The Da Vinci Code, and my favorite The Professional (if you haven’t seen it, do so). Reno has a demeanor that always steals the show, and he did it again in this one.

If I had to give this film a rating, it would be a 6 out of ten. It was good once, but I probably won’t see it again. The PG-13 rating meant that you could sit down with the kiddies and not worry about them seeing something you don’t want them to see. The violence is minimal, that there is no harsh language or nudity.

Next film review: Black Book (Zwartboek), directed by Paul Verhoeven.