Skip to main content

Allied: Film Review



Allied: Film Review


Image result for allied movie poster

The pairing of Allied, an old-fashioned spy romance starring Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard, and its director Robert Zemeckis, whose career of late has been consumed with technical gimmicks like motion capture, is somewhat odd. It should not have to take a director on the cutting edge of technology to make a film that presumably could have been made decades ago. But it is the aesthetic choices that make the film what it is; a sumptuous and dazzling throwback to an earlier era of storytelling. 

Pitt plays Max Vatan, a Canadian intelligence office who arrives in Casablanca in 1942. He and Marianne Beausejour, played by Cotillard, must pose as a married couple as part of a plot  to assassinate a high-ranking Nazi. Inevitably, they fall in love and the action follows them to London, where they marry and have a child. The rest of the film follows what happens when Vatan's superiors give him reason to suspect his wife is really a German spy.

It takes movie stars to sell a premise like this, and luckily Pitt and Cotillard have the needed star power to pull it off. Cotillard is captivating. She blurs the lines between real and affected emotion with ease. We are never quite sure what to make of Marianne, and Cotillard takes full advantage of this as she wafts in and out scenes like a cat. Pitt is solid enough, but his lack of chemistry with Cotillard is unfortunate. Luckily, Cotillard carries the movie for the both of them.

The sets and costumes are impeccable. More evocative of a 1940s movie than the actual 1940s, the lavish design elements contribute to the incredibly appealing visual look of the film, as does the gorgeous cinematography by Don Burgess. One particularly great scene: Max goes into a shop to confront the owner. Marianne and the baby wait in the car. Unable to see or hear what's going on inside, we see the terror slowly take over Marianne's face as she stares at the shop's closed door. It's heartstopping.

Allied is a war film that's not really about the war. The war is used mainly as the setting, the backdrop for a psychological thriller. This is particularly noticeable in the London-set section of the film, as Max and Marianne's wedding, the birth of their child, and a party at their Hampstead home are all interrupted by air raids. The approach is not at all subtle, but it gets the point across without having to spell it out in dialogue. The screenplay by Steven Knight allows plenty of time for the set-up, something most films today rush by. The Casablanca-set portion is also the most action-packed part of the film, which is a bit misleading, as the rest of the film operates on a much smaller scale. But it's vital that we see the spies in action; what attracted them to each other in first place. The ending feels both predictable and not entirely earned on paper, but Zemeckis stages it so beautifully that it almost doesn't matter.

The only Oscars Allied has any chance of being up for are in the below-the-line categories (Joanna Johnston's costumes could very well win, and the production design and sound could get nominated). But because this is not the type of film that normally gets nominated for Best Picture (that is, a stodgy, serious prestige drama), that does not make it any worse a film. I get the impression that many of the reviewers of Allied felt the Zemeckis, Pitt, and Cotillard should have instead used their talents to make a serious war drama, and gave the film a negative review because what they got is not what they wanted (See also: The Girl on the Train, another awesome movie maligned by critics for not being serious enough). Do not go see Allied expecting a prestige drama or an action movie. Go see it for what it is, a fun, unabashedly romantic, old-fashioned spy thriller. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Muppets Bring Humor and Heart to the Hollywood Bowl in "The Muppets Take the Bowl": Review

The Muppets are in  a bit of weird situation. Six years ago they made their big comeback with a smash hit movie, but since then they have had another flop movie and a short-lived television show. The franchise is still figuring out what iteration of itself works best for a 21st-century audience, and if it's not movies and it's not TV, what is it? It seems like they are trying to answer that question by putting on a rare live performance, happening September 8-10th at the Hollywood Bowl. Like the good Muppet fan I am, I was on hand opening night in eager anticipation of finding out what a live Muppet show looks like. It looked like, well, what you might expect it to look like. Puppeteers dressed in all black performing their characters right before our very eyes. That is when there wasn't a platform or podium they could hide behind, which there occasionally was during the course of the two-and-a-half hour show. While it certainly isn't how we are used to experienc

"My Mind Turns Your Life Into Folklore": Why Taylor Swift's "Gold Rush" Is a Song About Songwriting

"My mind turns your life into folklore." That line, from the song "Gold Rush," is the only time the word "folklore" is spoken on either of Taylor Swift's 2020 records, Folklore and Evermore , the latter of which is where the song appears. The presence of the line indicates that "Gold Rush" is a pivotal song not only in Swift's lockdown duology, but in her maturation as a songwriter.  Swift's early albums often drew heavily from her own experiences, with fans and the media scouring her lyrics for clues as to which ex-boyfriend her numerous breakup songs referred. Her tumultuous dating life made as many headlines as her music, in part because it informed so much of the music. The discourse was often ridiculous and reductive, and thankfully, that period of her career is over (Swift has been in a relationship with the actor Joe Alwyn since 2016).  Both of her 2020 albums have their fair share of autobiographical songs, but they also see

Every Julie London Album Ranked

Last month, for school I had to write a long research paper about 17th century Flemish flower paintings, which was a bit outside my comfort zone. So, I needed writing music and a lot of it. After listening a bit to Amazon Music's playlist "Big Band Christmas", I came across the song "Warm in December" by Julie London. It was a name I'd heard before, but I knew next to nothing about her. But the song was good enough to send me to Wikipedia, where I learned that London released 30 albums in the 14 years between 1955 and 1969. Most of the material she recorded was standards, the kind I spent most of 2020 listening to, so I decided that listening to London's entire discography (in order) would be perfect for writing my paper. Now, the paper's done ( I got an A), and I'm left with many, many thoughts about Julie London.  A film actress before releasing her first album, Julie is Her Name , in 1955, London had a mega-hit single with "Cry Me a River