The Good German

Directed by Steven Soderbergh from Joseph Kanon’s bestseller, The Good German never even convinces as a movie, let alone a decent movie. A genre pastiche that clumsily recreates the conventions of Casablanca and other semi-noir films of the ‘40s, this purely academic exercise doesn’t allow for emotional connection or drama in the way that the similarly constructed once did. Nor is it larkish enough to work as a Hudsucker Proxy proxy.
Even Gorgeous George seems curiously flat as the Jacob Geismer, an American war correspondent lately returned to Berlin during the Potsdam negotiations between the Allied powers. When his driver Tobey Maguire is murdered, we lose the liveliest element in the whole misconceived project and become embroiled in a mystery involving Cate Blanchett’s laughably unconvincing femme fatale. We soon learn that the Americans are poaching Nazi rocket scientists to come and work for NASA in the land of the free and evil is afoot. Well, d’uh.
As the horribly confused final act plays out, there are far more perplexing issues that need clarification. Who is doing what to whom now? Or how can a normally reliable actor like Cate Blanchett put in a performance that makes one think Carry On Veronika Voss? More importantly, why can’t a talent like Steven Soderbergh go and make a proper trick-free film?
There is, to be fair, a very good thriller to be made on this historical period. But you won’t find it in this sham marriage of archive material and shallow monochrome staging. Pity.