Rijndri
Load of rubbish!!
bap_tsagio
I am trying really hard to remember a World War II movie that is worst than this one! And believe me... I have seen a lot, from many different countries.Really poor acting by Carice Van Houten and some other actors combined with a boring script that tried really hard to be subversive but didn't make it. The 5 stars I gave were ONLY for the production, the director of photography and the acting of Sebastian Koch & Christian Berkel.If you want to see a good WWII movie about Europe I would recommend "The Cranes Are Flying" (1957), "Come And See" (1985) or even "The Pianist" (2002) but definitely NOT "Black Book".
Mazzo
This is a very good movie where characters are crossed by different determinations. During the second world war, we used to see some key groups in interaction: Allies countries, Resistance groups and German troops. Most of the second war films present these groups with fixed roles and expected behaviors. This film screenplay keeps us hunting who are the traitor of dutch resistance. At the same time, the main actress plays a resistance's spy who fell in love by a German captain. Beyond that, a German lieutenant is a robbery scheme chief that steals the money and belongings of Jewish upper-class people who pays to leave Netherlands. The main characters are shaped in a complex way grabbing the attention til the end. In short, a clever second world war film.
tomgillespie2002
Before he dazzled Hollywood with his blood-soaked satires Robocop (1987) and Starship Troopers (1997) - and made us cringe with Basic Instinct (1992) and Showgirls (1995) - director Paul Verhoeven made Soldier of Orange (1977) in his native Netherlands, a film about the Dutch resistance movement during World War II which starred Rutgher Hauer. Almost thirty years later, and only six years since Hollow Man (2000) seemed to drain him of his creativity, Verhoeven returned to his homeland to make Zwartboek (Black Book), and to again highlight his country's heroic struggle during the Nazi occupation.In 1944, Dutch Jew Rachel Stein (Carice van Houten), a singer living in Berlin before the war, hides from the Nazi regime in the war-torn Netherlands. When the farmhouse she was hiding in is destroyed by the Americans, she is forced to flee, reuniting with her family before setting off by boat to the safer south. However, the boat is ambushed by the Nazis and Rachel narrowly escapes with her life, watching her entire family murdered in the process. Lost and alone, she decides to join the resistance in The Hague, where her many talents are put to good use. A chance meeting on a train leads her to charming the socks off high-ranking Nazi officer Ludwig Muntze (Sebastian Koch), so Rachel, under the guise of Ellis de Vries, is given the task of seducing him.World War II movies seem to be made with one of two intentions. One is to delve into the human soul and explore the horrors of battle, and the other is to simply entertain. Verhoeven's movie seems to lie somewhere in between, and the results are intriguing to say the least. Too often does the drama get interrupted by an unnecessary gun battle or explosion for the film to be taken too seriously, but, even at 145 minutes, Black Book is never in danger of dragging. It also never misses an opportunity to get van Houten in the nude, but to anyone familiar with the work of Paul Verhoeven, this will come as no surprise. While the actress now most famous as Melisandre the Red Priestess in Game of Thrones is staggeringly beautiful, her constant clothes-shedding hardly serves the plot or her character.In fact, Black Book asks a hell of a lot of van Houten, who is forced to don a number of faces and personalities as her character digs herself deeper into the role of secret agent and uncovers betrayals and secret plots at every turn. She handles it exceptionally well, and van Houten really should have gone on to be a A-lister after this. She has a sparkling chemistry with Koch, who is also very good as the man on the side facing defeat, hoping to agree a truce with the resistance to avoid more bloodshed. It's a handsomely shot film all round, made all the more staggering that this was conceived on such a modest budget, and it's clear that Verhoeven was out to make a movie he could be proud of. While his familiar exploitative approach prevents it from being great, Black Book is never boring and is peppered with enough grey characters (Verhoeven certainly doesn't white-wash the portrayal of his fellow Dutch) to keep the twists and turns coming until the very end.
Simon Kalicinski
This movie needs to be taken with huge grain of salt if you don't want to tear your hair out while watching it.I suppose it depends on what sort of expectations you have beforehand, but that can really always be used to defend a movie, as well as argue for differing viewer's experiences, much like the fact that many of us have varying tastes in movies. However, I think some things can be more or less objectively agreed upon by people who appreciate the art of film and cinema.The suspension of disbelief required for this movie to make any kind of lasting impression is MASSIVE. The script feels unfinished, almost as if the rough draft that outlined the films events was passed for a finished product. Where major plot development or emotional discharge is expected, the acting performances fall short and disappoint time and again.Where do I even begin to exemplify this? I felt like every three minutes something in this movie irritated me to the point that I almost gave up watching it. Was it the jolly and utterly unconvincingly acted coincidental reunion of a Jewish woman with her family after being separated by years of Nazi occupation? Or the lack of emotional burden expressed by her at the equally sudden death of said family moments later vis-a-vis the hysteric attack that ensues after she learns of the execution of her Nazi officer lover, Captain Muntze? Or maybe the blind trust placed by Dutch Resistance fighters in said Captain, who after sleeping with our undercover Jewish heroine turns out to be a very compassionate and helpful guy despite years of service to the Reich? Or possibly the ease with which a Canadian commander, having liberated a Dutch town, is persuaded to comply with a German military tribunal sentence by a NAZI GENERAL, and the crime was NOT carrying out retributions towards FAMILIES OF DUTCH RESISTANCE FIGHTERS? Yes, and there was more, much more.When the main lead, who by the way is infiltrating a Nazi HQ in order to get back at the enemy, reveals her affiliation with Dutch Resistance to an obviously promiscuous female co-worker of ambiguous loyalty and weak character, you know someone doesn't give two shits about contextual credibility. Even though the setting and premise of the film are interesting, it all becomes irrelevant through it's lack of depth or exploration of...anything. The films pace gives the impression that it was cut by a person with severe ADD who got bored with the scene they were working on between 5 and 10 minutes into it and just wanted to move on to the next one. I mean, when you can't even make a love scene reflect the sexual interest of at least one of the two people about engage in love-making, there really isn't much going for you by that point.This movie was a joke, a bad one too, and I don't see how this can be classified as one of Paul Verhoeven's so-called "satirical" works, thus somehow making it less terrible(?) Anyone who says that should stop talking, because you can't talk me into thinking you actually believe that poppycock. If you have any reverence for the time-period and the genre, you will probably feel the same way I do. If this movie was based on real events, as it states, then I hope it was based on them with a substantial amount of deviation from them.
