World War 2 spy story’s focus romance, not action
ALLIED, with Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard, Jared Harris and Lizzy Caplan, directed by Robert Zemeckis. 3.5/5 WHEN you hear of a movie starring Brad Pitt as a spy who marries another spy, one immediately thinks of Mr and Mrs Smith, where Pitt played opposite Angelina Jolie, who later became his wife.
But fans of highaction spy movies will undoubtedly be a little disappointed as is more of a romance than an action movie.
Nevertheless, the storyline is fast-paced and, although only containing one or two real action sequences, it will certainly make the audience consider how politics and war make people do things they would never normally consider.
Set mostly in London during the Blitz, the story begins when Canadian spy Max Vatan (Pitt) arrives in Morocco pretending to be the husband of Marianne Beauséjour (Marion Cotillard), a French woman who the German occupying forces seem to trust.
Beauséjour had fled from France when her team of spies were compromised. Their mission is to assassinate a German official.
They then complete the mission and escape with their lives and, despite both believing spies involved in relationships could be dangerous, Vatan asks Beauséjour to join him in London as his wife.
They get married and have a child together.
Vatan then returns to flying and supervising spy missions for the British to occupied France, while Beauséjour settles down as a housewife, looking after the home and their baby girl.
The film shows the brutality and devastation of the German bombing of London, with tracer shells and warplanes filling the dark skies above England’s capital, but it also highlights the subterfuge involved at times of war.
The family seems to have escaped the worst of the war, but then Vatan is called in by the Special Operations Directorate and told that his wife might be a German spy.
The cinematography is good, and the costumes are authentic and have been nominated for an Oscar at this month’s Academy Awards.
It is well-paced, but a romance rather than an action movie – so buyers beware.