Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard team up for a new World War II romantic espionage thriller. It's called "Allied." Spectrum News film critic Neil Rosen filed the following review.
It's 1942 and Pitt plays a Canadian pilot, working for British intelligence, who parachutes into the Moroccan desert to rendezvous with Cotillard, a French resistance fighter stationed in Casablanca. Their assignment is to pretend they're husband and wife and assassinate a Nazi ambassador, along with some other high-ranking German officials, at a fancy party.
Although it was supposed to be just a job, their mutual attraction for each other is undeniable and they fall in love. Moving to England, they get married and have a baby who is born, dramatically, during the London blitz. The real twist comes when Pitt's superiors inform him that his wife might be a spy working for the Nazis. If it's true, he has to kill her or they'll kill him for treason.
The ending is a little pat and the storyline could have used more of a Hitchcockian twist. However, director Robert Zemeckis is a great storyteller who knows how to take a good screenplay and get you engaged.
Here, he's made an old fashioned war time romance, the kind of film, both stylistically and in tone, that Hollywood used to make years ago, while he nicely adds some modern day filmmaking sensibilities along the way. Even the Casablanca setting is an all-knowing nod to the 1940s film classic.
Pitt is a bit wooden at times, and Cotillard fares better, but together they make a striking, glamorous couple. The film is lensed beautifully, while attention to period detail is superb in all areas, from the costumes to the production design, expertly evoking the era. In a word: Go
Neil Rosen’s Big Apple Rating:
Three Apples