2006 - THE GOOD GERMAN, attempt at a Casablanca/The Third Man type of thriller with some dirty stuff thrown in.

The director Steven Soderbergh, has loaded up The Good German with lots of film making skill and style.  Soderbergh is a big admirer of Carol Reed's The Third Man.  He even repeats a few of the shots from that film.  However Soderbergh is stuck with a story that just isn't very interesting. 

George Clooney stands in for Humphrey Bogart or Joseph Cotton or Ronald Reagan.  Clooney wanders around post war Berlin looking for his lost love the too skinny Cate Blanchett.  Blanchett's the wife of some German Nazi rocket science guy who the Americans want to help them with their rocket program.

 The Good German is reminiscent of films like, The Quiller Memorandum, The Kremlin Letter, Funeral in Berlin and The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.  One of those "dirty side of the spy game," films where the good guys aren't really any different from the bad guys and everyone is a corrupt bastard.  Besides having that in common all of these films usually had completely incomprehensible plots and The Good German stays true to this formula as well.

Soderbergh's a great director, with an independent streak.  He makes interesting films that certainly aren't the usual Hollywood pap.  Unfortunately he also makes interesting films that just don't have much of an appeal to the general public. 

The Good German is nothing if not downbeat, it's also not The Third Man.

105 minutes.