While a 65% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes suggests a movie should be checked out, sometimes you wonder why the score isn’t higher. Allied, the Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, The Walk) World War II love story set in both Casablanca and London about two intelligence officers from opposite sides of the world says a lot. The movie, set in both Casablanca and London, has been loosely referred to as Mr. and Mrs. Smith (because of Brad Pitt) meets Casablanca. While I understand the reference, this is far from the truth. I was not too fond of either of these other movies. Casablanca is one of the greatest movies of all time (yawn), but I really enjoyed Allied.
The first third of the film takes place in North Africa in 1942. We meet Canadian intelligence officer Max Vatan (Brad Pitt – Moneyball, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), connecting with French Resistance fighter Marianne Beausejour (Marion Cotillard – Two Days, One Night, Midnight in Paris) to quietly assimilate intelligence in the Moroccan capital city and use this newfound knowledge to assassin a high-ranking official in the German military. The two operate as a married couple even though we meet them when they are meeting each other. Marianne has done a great job getting to know the locals, and she and Max have a whole story about why he has been away that is played out for a group of friends at dinner just as it is for us. Zemeckis sets all of this up for us to show that these two spies are the real deal. There are just enough ears around to hear that Max has six weeks of leave from France, where he is serving in the military as a chemist. And they also learn that he knows that he doesn’t speak the language very well, which we are all aware is a lie.
When alone, she informs him of all she has learned. The pair learns how to play a married couple and gets closer to those they are trying to assassinate. It is during this time that the two spies start falling for one another. Something that Zemeckis did extremely well was let the story unfold naturally. There was a point in the film where I thought it was moving too slowly. But I quickly reevaluated and realized that this was the purpose. Zemeckis was building intrigue and not rushing his story. This movie fills out so many different genres. And it goes in many different directions along the way.
If you’ve seen any of the trailers, you learn that Marianne is accused of being a German spy. We don’t know the events leading up to this and, of course, what happens after this. We are aware that Max is in complete denial and refuses to believe that his wife could dupe him for so long. It has been years since the mission in Casablanca. Despite the rules against spies engaging romantically, Max has successfully gone through the correct channels to get Marianne to come to London to marry him for real. The two start a real-life together, and it’s beautiful to see. They are very much in love, and the addition of baby Anna unites them even more. But much like Pitt’s characters in other movies (Legends of the Fall, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Seven, The Devil’s Own, A River Runs Through It), for each moment of peace, we know that there is intense strife right around the corner. That is no different in Allied after British Intelligence intercepts confidential messages sent to the Germans that are coming near the residence of Max and Marianne. And while they haven’t been able to pinpoint the exact location yet, they have another reason to believe that she is a German spy. A test is set up to prove whether she is or not, and if it is determined that she is a spy, Max will be forced to execute her himself (again, this is told through the preview) to assure that he is not an accomplice. Max agrees, knowing quite well that she will be exonerated from these accusations.
There are so many side characters in this movie who each serve their purpose but become just that…side characters. Pitt and Cotillard are the focus of the film. While Cotillard is looking like she has a halfway decent chance to secure a Best Actress Academy Award nomination, I thought Pitt gave the better performance of the two. His portrayal of Max from a gritty, confident, and gifted spy/assassin to a loving and dedicated husband entering a quiet time in his life to a man who becomes so uncertain that he begins to question everything and everyone to gain control of a situation he seemingly has no control over, Pitt’s character development is quietly one of his best in years. Sure he used his good looks and kind heart to depict the romantic side of his character effortlessly. But watching him go from a confident assassin to a desperate husband who is searching to clear his wife’s name, using unconventional avenues that put innocent people at risk, even while at the same time he is also questioning whether he even knows this woman he has spent years sharing a bed with is brilliant.
There are twists and turns along the way, and you’ll have a few ideas of how this movie could end, but you won’t be able to identify which path it will take truly. As mentioned earlier, Zemeckis doesn’t rush anything. He builds the love story and adds some drama. He successfully incorporates a handful of action scenes and builds suspense. And while the suspense is not “at the edge of your seat, type stuff, it is still good. You cheer for the good people in this film. But, unfortunately, you don’t always know who all those people are. If you like a good romance movie, you could probably do better. If you like a good war movie, you could probably do better. But if you like a good romance movie centered during periods of war, this is one of the better ones. As Americans, I think that we have certain perceptions about history that are often hard to remove. Allied shifts the focus of that a little bit and shows us a different side of World War II where there still was plenty of sex, drugs, picnics, times of optimism, and other components of life that are happening. It isn’t all bombs and raids and doom and gloom in nations of war. I wouldn’t say that this was a refreshing movie by any means, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was so much better than both Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Casablanca, two movies that continually lost my focus and two films which I’ll never see again.
Plot 9.5/10
Character Development 9/10
Character Chemistry 9.5/10
Acting 9/10
Screenplay 9/10
Directing 9/10
Cinematography 9/10 (lots of CGI to make this look like wartime in the 1940s, but it is so effective)
Sound 8/10
Hook and Reel 9/10 (hooked from Pitt parachuting into Morocco in the film’s opening sequence)
Universal Relevance 9/10 (it’s a different look at WWII than what we are accustomed to seeing)
90%