"There’s a preposterous plot twist every five minutes, a muddled point (even a good German hasn’t got a chance against the evil villains in the American government), and the ending—replete with a propeller, a rainy airport runway and Mr. Clooney in another trench coat—is stolen right out of the final four minutes of Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca. None of it makes any sense, and even the black-and-white newsreel footage of ravaged war zones and the faces of the decimated German people is boring. You lose sleep thinking of all the ways The Good German goes wrong. Where is Hitler? Where are the tanks? Where is the famous overhead Warner Brothers lighting and Max Steiner music? And where is Major Clark Gable now that we need him?"- Rex Reed, in the New York Observer, eviscerating this awful film.
The other "The Good..." movie this year, "The Good Shepherd," isn't a whole lot better, I'm afraid. Matt Damon gives a cypher's performance, opposite numerous Great Actors (DeNiro, Hurt, Turturro, Gambon, Keir Dullea and even an unrecognizable Joe Pesci.) The plot starts out promising, but soon gets bogged down in stuff we just don't care about, before making the not-so-subtle point that all the misdeeds of the CIA are the WASP establishment's fault.
I didn't think it was possible to make a boring movie about the CIA, but Bobby D has managed it.
Posted by Stephen Silver at December 14, 2006 04:41 PM