Brad Pitt Marion Cottiard Jared Harris Lizzie Caplan Matthew Goode
“Marriages made in the field never work”, so
says Max’s superior on learning that Max (Pitt) and Marianne (Cottiard) have
gotten married. The two were
partners in a successful operation that killed a German ambassador during
WWII. The statement is prophetic,
but not in any way Max suspects.
Nevertheless, the couple seems very happy together, they have a child,
and except for Max being called away frequently for work, their life is golden.
The film begins with the first meeting of Max
and Marianne in Casablanca, Morocco, where they have to convince everyone in
the community that they are married and are uniting after a long separation. In
truth they are British and French spies who are charged with a critical
operation. It’s interesting to see
this introduction, as I imagine it’s a true reflection of the awkwardness that
agents must experience when they are pulling off an act with someone they’ve
never met before. Marianne seems
more experienced than Max—she has certainly been in Casablanca for a longer
time, and since she is charismatic and very social, she has made many
friends. He doesn’t seem to mind;
when he is put to the test of being a card shark in order to be invited to a
party, his assets are quickly apparent.
Things seem to float along; Max is promoted and
Marianne seems entirely fulfilled with her role as homemaker and mother. Then some earth-shattering news (for
them) arrives, and Max is in a major dilemma. That’s when the cat-and-mouse game really starts, for
despite his instructions to do nothing, Max can’t help doing some investigating
on his own.
The script by Steven Knight (who also wrote Dirty Pretty Things, Eastern Promises, and
Locke, which he also directed) is layered and nuanced, and the central,
ultimate conflict is intriguing, both in its conception and in its
resolution. Unlike Knight’s
previous film, Locke, which was an
ingenious account of a man in a car on the telephone, Allied contains some artificialities in some of the scenes that
detract from its plausibility, e.g., the couple’s baby being born in a building
while it is being bombed, and an operation to extract information from a man in
jail resulting in numerous killings).
These are unnecessary exaggerations. It may be that the director, Robert Zemeckis, who
nevertheless has fine work to his credit, and/or the producers wanted to hype up
the story, which results in my reaction of “Oh, c’mon!" But this is not a major detraction.
Marion Cottiard carries off the role of a spy
to perfection and with real heart.
At one point her character states that she is so good at what she does
because she uses genuine emotions.
And that is what Cottiard does in acting; we’re drawn to the charisma
and quick wit she infuses into her characters. Brad Pitt is…well, Brad Pitt is so known to us because of all the publicity he gets in his personal
life, that it may interfere with our seeing the character. It was Brad before me the whole time
rather than Max the character. On
the other hand, he is usually a very good actor, and perhaps the filming of Allied occurred during a stressful time
in his personal life, which could have affected his performance. I thought the chemistry just wasn’t
completely there between Max and Marianne.
A spy thriller with imaginatively
conceived intrigue.
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