Directed by Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump; Beowulf; The Polar Express; Cast Away; What Lies Beneath; Who Framed Roger Rabbit; Romancing the Stone; Back to the Future) and starring Brad Pitt (12 Years a Slave; Moneyball; The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Inglourious Basterds; Ocean's Twelve; The Big Short) and Marion Cotillard (La môme; Inception; The Dark Knight Rises; Midnight in Paris)
Romnatic spy drama, 124 mins, 12+
Firstly, this is not a WWII battle film, it is a love story set with WWII as a backdrop. Max Vatan (Brad Pitt), a British Army intelligence officer from Canada working undercover, and Marianne Beauséjour (Marion Cotillard), a French Resistance fighter also working undercover, meet on assignment in Morocco. Both are well-trained professionals and do not hesitate to kill, when and where necessary. When their assignment is over, Max applies for permission for Marianne to travel to London where they marry and have a child, the latter during the Blitz.
Their relationship is tested to the limit while war ravages around them. The film looks at aspect of war from the perspective of people living in London at the time, both going about their daily family life as well as occasionally watching planes flying overhead, and sometimes the air raid sirens going off when a raid is imminent.
With such a pedigree from the director and his unparalled back catalogue, the audience was not disappointed in the end result, a riveting drama that was neither overly romantic nor contained excessive war footage; instead, it focussed on the relationship between the two main characters with a number of relevant and interesting sub-plots that kept the audience engaged throughout. It certainly does not seem anywhere near two hours long, and includes scenes where Max flies a plane into France and lands in a field, to be met by resistancefighters.
This film is a wonderful mix of espionage and love, and incorporates a lot of Zemeckis trademark special effects, most of which are so subtle you will not know them when you are looking straight at them.
