The Good German

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

It's all about the synchronicity. Sort of. I worked on the film "The Good German" and I wondered what was so good about the book that they wanted to make it into a movie. So, I bought the book when I saw it in the discount bin. And after reading it, I still don't know why they wanted to make it into a movie.

The mystery is convoluted and I didn't really care if they solved it. Are the characters all two dimensional? Yes. I guess that will help in the making of a two dimensional medium. Are Nazis bad? Yes. Did we hire Nazis after world war II to build rockets for us? Yes? Ah, the burning questions of the book are so burning.

I guess the thinking of today is to point out at the all wars are bad. Since most of the documentation about World War 2 purports it to be the last good war, well then it's time to make it a bad war as well. At least what we did after we won the war.

Maybe, the movie will be better.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

I was beginning to think I had lost my touch, but the Good Germann reaffirms my belief that I only work on bad movies. And the Good German is horrendously bad. It's the scales of balance after Dreamgirls which wasn't bad.

Good German bad bad bad.

But what could go wrong? You've got hot director Stephen Soderberg. You've got spiderman Tobey Maguire. There is the sexiest man alive, George Clooney. And you have a script by Paul Attanasio.

I think on the one hand they wanted to do an homage to Casblanca right down to the airport scene at the end, complete with DC-3. It's shot in black white. It has the war as the backdrop. It has the lovers who broke up before the war reunited after the war. It goes on and on. The love story is lame because there doesn't seem to be any chemistry between Blanchett, who plays Greta Garbo, and Clooney, the man getting beat up in every other scene. They profess their love, but they don't seem to have an attraction for each other. Which is a problem because Clooney sacrifices everything to get her out of Berlin. You keep asking yourself why would he do that for this woman? Oh, right. The script says he does.

Then of course there is hammy, played by Tobey Maguire. I don't need to see him having sex. He's a put on a few pounds and now he can beat up George Clooney. Should I have given out a spoiler alert? Whatever. you guys aren't renting this dog. Maguire is supposed to play this smooth cynical black marketeer. It doesn't seem to be a good fit for squeaky clean Maguire. At least he gets shot.

The book had it right. In the book the Maguire gets shot right up front. He's just some driver that gets killed and winds up in the russian sector. The book is structured around solving the murder of te Maguire character. Built in plot. In the movie, we see everything he does and why he's a bad guy and then he gets shot. Big deal. I guess we have the Clooney Blanchette love story to fall back on.

When the film isn't trying to be Casablanca, it's trying to be Chinatown. The whole city of Berlin is rife with corruption. Instead of water wars, we have race to get the Nazi rocket scientists. Corrupt capitalists are behind the scenes manipulating everything. Clooney even sports a bandage on the side of his head for most of the film. Clooney can't trust anyone and he is constantly being betrayed. Even right to the end when Blanchette is rescued and she reveals that she had to escape because she was finding jews to send to the ovens during the war. Despite being a jew herself. Ah, the convolutions.

At least they used the huge bombed out Berlin set we built on the back lot of universal.. Oh, wait, you barely even saw it . . . .