A shockingly lame, unconvincing film. (Review: Patrick
Compton – 4/10)
Allied is a
shockingly lame, unconvincing film by Robert Zemeckis, particularly as the
anticipated fizzing chemical reaction between Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard is
almost entirely absent. The inter-reaction between these two gorgeous beasts,
in fact, is as arousing as a used teabag.
Black marks must go to Zemeckis for his horribly laboured
direction, Steven Knight for his trite screenplay and Pitt for his most wooden
performance since Troy.
When you consider all the Hollywood tittle-tattle that
circulated last year, claiming that Pitt and Cotillard had had an affair on set
(a claim strongly denied by the latter), the soggy end result will ensure
that’s the only reason the movie will be remembered.
The early scenes take place in Vichy-ruled Casablanca in
1942 and it’s clear that Zemeckis, who hasn’t made a decent film in 20 years,
is hoping to recreate nostalgic memories of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman
at play.
His attempt doesn’t come close, despite the impressive
sets and costumes. Pitt, who seems to be enveloped in thespian permafrost,
plays Max Vatan, a Canadian Air Force agent parachuted in to assassinate the
local German ambassador. In order to achieve this, he has to link up with the
lissome Marianne Beausejour (Cotillard), a French agent who somehow managed to
escape from Dieppe in France the previous year after the Germans had rumbled
her spy ring.
Disguised as a newly married couple, the pair not only
carry out their ho-hum mission but succeed in genuinely falling in love,
although their main moment of passion, in a car during a sand storm, is
laughably contrived.
Accepting that Pitt (with his dreadful accent) is a
French speaker is a particularly hard ask, but let’s be generous and say that
the Casablanca scenes are tolerable. But any attempts at suspension of
disbelief implode in chapter two when the couple set up home in London. The
pace, measured at best until now, slows to a dawdle with nothing much happening
besides Marianne giving birth in the street during a German air raid in one of
the movie’s most ludicrously unlikely scenes.
But then the couple’s idyll is shattered and the pace
picks up, albeit with little accompanying dramatic force. After somehow
surviving their first adventure in Casablanca, the aftermath in London
threatens to tear the couple apart as certain inconvenient questions are asked.
By this stage, however, the movie is in the dead zone.
Zemeckis’s attempt to create a nostalgic wartime pastiche, full of love and
tragedy, had long since crashed and burned. The plot wanders along an
increasingly ragged path and the climax, which takes place at a local airfield,
completely lacks emotional impact. Pitt’s reaction to what takes place is
either ridiculously hamfisted or a clear indication of how seriously he took
the entire project.
Let’s end on a positive note. Cotillard’s valiant
contribution to a lost cause has to be acknowledged. The glamorous French
actress makes the best of her limited role, playing the enigmatic agent, lover
and mother with as much vivacity as she can muster. Clad in a succession of
stunning outfits, she is by some distance the easiest thing on the eye that the
movie has to offer though even she is unable to make us believe that she and
the frozen Pitt are believable lovers.
Allied opens in
Durban on January 20. – Patrick Compton
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