The Good German (2006)

Ah... Voiceover. A true mark of pretentious and lazy directing. Shame on you, Soderbergh. 

Another mark of the former, is unnecessary black and white. Sometimes a genius move, most of the time not. Soderbergh does strive to make it authentic, but the fact that he uses documentary footage, makes the difference in style noticeable in a way that draws far more attention than it otherwise would have done.  

As for the casting, Maguire is perfect as the eager beaver in his workday mask, and more average as a wannabe-trickster and gangster. The voiceover also lets him down, as it distracts from his otherwise half-decent character, explaining unnecessarily for those too busy to actually watch the film. Another problem with his character is that that there is zero believability in the relationship between him and Cate Blanchett. On all levels. She is, I suppose, meant to be some sort of femme fatale here, but really doesn't cut it. Apart from the black and white and her "hard to love" theatrics she is leaps and bounds from the true great women who've pulled that off. Besides, her Russian accent is almost half as bad as Connery's was in "The Hunt for Red October". Clooney doesn't really add much to the story apart from being the protagonist it is told around. It's impossible to see much of a motivation for his actions. 

Another weakness is Soderbergh trying to introduce a political drama, but leaves it almost an hour into the film before even implying much of it. From there on, there is a clear improvement of both intrigue and suspense for a while. Unfortunately, director Soderbergh drops that ball rather quickly, and we're back in a bit of a mess. At least it never gets boring to see Clooney beaten up by half the cast.

There is a twist with a bit of cool irony to it, but the story is muddled and the characters uninteresting. There are none you really care about the faith of, and the Macguffin is as muddled as the story. And to practically steal the ending scene from the far better war-film Casablanca. Sacrilege. And not a comparison that Soderbergh should have made.

5/10