Allied

At one point in Allied, Robert Zemeckis' would-be World War II thriller, a protagonist is seen lying in bed, reading a Graham Greene novel. The association is anything but random: Greene, one of the great spy novelists of all time, was known for his twisty, convoluted plotlines, and noir-esque touches. You can certainly imagine all the ways Zemeckis' film yearns to echo Greene's sophisticated flim-flammery, but sadly, inserting the book's cover in that scene is as close as the film ever comes.

It's not entirely without its merits, slight as they may be. First off, you have two established stars -- Brad Pitt, who plays Max Vatan, an undercover black ops officer working with the ultra-secret V-section division of British intelligence, sent to Casablanca in 1942 to assassinate the German ambassador; and the luminescent Marion Cotillard, as Marianne Beausejour, Vatan's gifted partner in the operation, pretending to be his wife while helping to execute the difficult operation. Naturally, in the course of their work together as a fake couple, they actually do fall in love -- consummated memorably in a parked car during a raging sandstorm -- which eventually leads her to join him in England in order to get married and give birth to their daughter (who is literally born in a hospital courtyard during the blitz, baptism by ack-ack fire).

For a long while, things seem fine, but the film, which has been playing it slow and straight to this point, utilizes this lull to finally set its hook: Despite its careful vetting of Marianne, the ever-suspicious V-section suspect her of being a German spy and using her elevated position as the wife of a high-ranking husband to slip significant intelligence across enemy lines. Confronted with the possibility, Vatan is initially convinced of his wife's innocence, until every detail in their lives is forced to come into question, driving him relentlessly to find out the truth.

It's a fair premise -- the secrets we keep from each other and the manner in which even married former spies, who have spent their lives deceiving people, can never quite trust anyone else -- though it must be pointed out that Allied is similar to the vastly superior Tony Gilroy film Duplicity, but despite the star power and what might have been a delightfully confounding premise, Zemeckis is never able to breathe much in the way of life into the proceedings. It takes many of its cues from the original romantic Moroccan thriller Casablanca, of course, but this film always seems more interested in aping other, far better-realized, films than breaking much new ground on its own.

What's more, the film's success virtually hinges on the chemistry between its leads -- if we buy into their love for each other, it digs the knife of the dilemma deeper into our gullets -- but other than standing next to each other looking beautiful together, their relationship is surprisingly devoid of heat. Without the emotion powering its execution -- think of the wrenching tragedy of The English Patient, by withering comparison -- it becomes a series of increasingly nonsensical plot twists we view from a cold distance. At one point, Marianne explains to Max the secret to pulling off such dramatic deception, "I keep the emotions real," she breathes, but ironically, it's those very items that appear to be most lacking between them.

It doesn't help that Pitt's face, never the most emotive or pliant to begin with, appears to be even less expressive than before. The soon-to-be 53-year-old actor has always been able to use far more than his hunkish good looks to sell a character -- a quality I've always found admirable -- but, here, in a role demanding more subtle emotional cues, he seems oddly flat. Cotillard, whose work can be absolutely breathtaking, does her best, it would seem, but trying to breathe life into altogether clunky lines such as "Being good at this kind of work is not very beautiful," and "This is really me, before God," she can only do so much.

If nothing else, the costume design and the hardware, all 1942 by way of high-end Hollywood art direction, is fetching, and watching beautiful people smoke thick cigarettes in a setting as visually resplendent as Spain (filling in admirably for Morocco) has its charms, but even those can only take you so far.

This isn't the first time Zemeckis' work has been criticized for peculiarly mishandled emotions. His 2004 animated family film The Polar Express utilized what was then cutting-edge computer animation to tell his tale, but all people could talk about afterward was the unfortunate "dead eye" effect of his motion tracking software. Thankfully, none of these actors are stricken with that sort of horror, but for all their acute emoting, there's still very little in the way of life here.

MovieStyle on 11/25/2016