The Good German
While in post-war Berlin to cover the Potsdam Conference, Jake Geismar (George Clooney), an Army correspondent, is drawn into a murder investigation which involves his former mistress (Cate Blanchett) and his driver (Tobey Maguire).
31 August 1940, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
24 March 1972, Kranj, Slovenia
20 August 1962, Voskresensk, Moscow Oblast, Russian SFSR, USSR [now Russia]
16 January 1983, Leningrad, RSFSR, USSR [now St. Petersburg, Russia]
27 June 1975, Santa Monica, California, USA
18 December 1878, Gori, Tiflis Governorate, Russian Empire [now Republic of Georgia]
27 June 1973, Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA
28 April 1978, Rutherford, New Jersey, USA
13 December 1969, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
April 23, 2009
A beautifully flawed experiment, "The Good German" is an entertaining if unbalanced war drama that places modern cinema mores on a classic style of American film when the Hayes code would never have allowed such overt sexual reality.
May 02, 2008
No matter that it's based on a book, the movie is more about how the reality of the time was seen through the lens of a Michael Curtiz while he was filming "Casablanca".
January 19, 2007
There's a line between homage and mimicry, and Soderbergh has crossed it.
May 23, 2007
While admirable as an example of directorial innovation and homage, The Good German fails to connect on a basic emotional level.
December 22, 2006
The Good German is a movie wonk's triumph and no one else's. Soderbergh gets the visuals right but not the clean storytelling line of classic cinema, nor the iconic characters or moral certainty of the oldies.
January 19, 2007
This cast almost makes The Good German watchable. It's just that their screenwriter and director don't do them any favors.
December 22, 2006
I have to admire an ostensibly nostalgic entertainment that so concertedly undermines the romanticism of wartime Hollywood.
January 19, 2007
We get no heroes, not even flawed ones. Clooney, our marquee man, chases through numbing plot contortions only because of his lust for Lena. By the time The Good German ended, I had barely a clue if the good ones had lived or died.
February 02, 2009
The Good German is the bad movie. Except for the ambience -- the look of the film -- it stumbles awkwardly on every level.
March 08, 2007
Why emphasise flaws in a film of such overall ambition and expertise?
July 14, 2007
The final verdict on this movie is that for all its attempts to replicate the great movies of the 1940s, it fails miserably.
