Allied, 2016
Directed by Robert Zemeckis, 124 minutes
Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard, Lizzy Caplan, Matthew Goode
Half spy-action-film, half love-story, the only thing Zemeckis does well here is romanticize.
Brad Pitt is as engaging as a sandbag playing Max Vatan, a well-greased Canadian RAF pilot on a classified mission in WWII Casablanca. Enter the slightly more intriguing Marianne Beauséjour (Marion Cotillard). She’s his French-resistance-fighting partner, masquerading as his wife and donned in silks and smiles, with a twinkle in her eye.
They set about ‘testing’ one another as they prepare for their suicide mission to assassinate a Nazi official. So far the movie hasn’t committed too many sins outside of a bad CGI parachute landing.
Vatan and Beauséjour decide to spend their last night out in the dunes. The night ends in car sex during a sand storm so claustrophobic our grimaces look like the ones on Pitt and Cotillard’s faces.
The spy-lovers smarten up and head over to their dinner party to complete the mission. This is it, the big action sequence for the film, happening less than halfway through. It utilizes some good camera angles but Vatan and Beauséjour look so suspicious throughout we wonder how they ever managed to become spies.
Miraculously, they get away alive and having consummated their great love, move to London to get married for real and raise the daughter they conceived during their uncomfortable car sex.
Almost two years go by before British intelligence picks up chatter that points to Beauséjour being a planted German spy. Vatan kicks a chair and swears that love conquers all, his wife isn’t working for the Germans, blah blah blah. They set up a test to see if she’s the spy.
And the three days of the test last for-freaking-ever with cameos from characters whose purpose is only fleetingly explained.
One fulfilled dream and a letter later, Zemeckis is trying too hard to save his abominable plot line. The score breathes a little bit of life into this otherwise lack-luster film with a touching theme and ‘Sing Sing Sing’ to back it up.
The whole two hours are summed up in the opening sequence, fading to the word “lie” in the title. Like how Zemeckis lied to us and told us this was going to be a thrilling-action-spy intrigue.
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