An enjoyably old-fashioned espionage thriller starring Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard
An enjoyably old-fashioned espionage thriller starring Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard.
They play a couple tussling with love, loyalty, suspicion and deception in the midst of World War Two. Working for British intelligence, Pitt's Canadian airman hooks up with Cotillard's French Resistance fighter after parachuting into Nazi-occupied Morocco in 1942. Their mission: assassinate the German ambassador.
In sun-baked Casablanca, the strangers must pose as husband and wife to undertake their perilous assignment; a year later, in grey, damp London, they are husband and wife for real. Then comes news that British intelligence has sprung a leak...
Sumptuously glossy, this movie, directed Robert Zemeckis, looks fabulous. And so do its stars. Even when the bullets are flying, they still look impossibly glamorous.
Take a step back, and the film's melodramatic intrigue begins to look shaky, but there are so many sequences of high suspense you might not even notice and certainly won't care.
In the moments between the intrigue, Stephen Knight's screenplay gives its hero and heroine some delicious repartee to relish. 'You'll be OK to use a Sten on the night?' asks Pitt on the eve of the mission in Casablanca, fearing his partner won't get to grips with their weaponry. 'I would be OK if I had to use cutlery,' is her blade-sharp rejoinder.
