IN Review: Allied 'lacks that overall epic feel of those classics of yore...'

Allied (2016)

Rating: 3/5


Synopsis
Morocco, 1942: After working together to assassinate the German Ambassador, resistance fighters Max (Brad Pitt) and Marianne (Marion Cotillard) escape to marry and start a new life in London, where he is a Canadian Wing Commander in the Air Force.

They settle down and have a child. But a year later, Max is told that good evidence points to his wife being a German spy.

He has one weekend to try and prove her innocence or else face having to execute her.


Review by Jason Day 


A film so heavily trailed at cinemas these past few weeks, it was a blessed relief to finally see it and get a review out of the door.

The trailers didn't very accurately depict the full length experience that would follow. They suggested a lavish, action-packed, throbbing and emotionally wrought WWII romantic thriller about a man who suspects his wife is a Nazi spy and has to prove her innocence. With two of the hottest and most beautiful stars on the planet, surely it would inevitably deliver?

To be fair, in part it does. Director Robert Zemeckis (Back To the Future, Forrest Gump) is a highly skilled technician, so the opening sequences in Casablanca (a setting that deliberately evokes the type of film it wants to be) are explosive, both in terms of TNT and the highly charged romance between the leads that is developed and artfully, seductively played.

But it lacks that overall epic and irreplaceable feel of those classics of yore and it sags considerably when we shift to Blitzed out London and some unaccountably dull or odd moments - will mushroom picking on Hampstead Heath as a precursor to love-making become the latest trend in the capital?

For the full review click here

 

Image courtesy of GK films