GEORGE CLOONEY - MOVIE REVIEWS: THE GOOD GERMAN

MOVIE REVIEWS: THE GOOD GERMAN

Several critics suggest that The Good German, starring George Clooney, is a movie whose plot not only takes place in the post World War II era but that its look and feel also is a throwback to that time. (Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times describes it as "a movie set in 1945 that looks as if it were made in 1945.") Most agree that the gambit doesn't work. Manohla Dargis writes in the New York Times that director Steven Soderbergh "has tried to resurrect the magic of classical Hollywood, principally by sucking out all the air, energy and pleasure from his own filmmaking." Rick Groen in the Toronto Globe and Mail writes that while the look of the film "is fantastic," it works against the overall production. "The conceit is dubious," he says, "the whole idea of replicating a forties' noir flick, not just the black-and-white stock but right down to the filmmaking techniques and the melodramatic score and even the theatrical mode of acting. Sincere homage is one thing, slavish imitation is quite another." Or as Jack Mathews puts it in the New York Daily News: "If you feel anything other than admiration for its craftsmanship, let me know; The Good German is as emotionally cold and unconvincing as any movie I've seen this year."


21/12/2006