Noir pose mars ‘Good German’

In theaters

THE GOOD GERMAN, directed by Steven Soderbergh, written by Paul Attanasio from Joseph Kanon’s novel, 101 minutes, rated R.

Steven Soderbergh’s “The Good German” is at best a mildly entertaining curiosity, at worst an ambitious failure. The film is a misguided old soul so steeped in the past, it intentionally evokes the past, in this case the Warner Bros. noir films of the 1940s.

Set just after the war in 1945 Berlin, the film is less a movie than it is an experiment. It pilfers from a wealth of Warner’s more infamous noir classics – particularly “Casablanca,” which it’s modeled after – but also “The Third Man,” with countless other influences scattered throughout (Hitchcock and Wilder are major influences).

Attention to style is the movie’s main concern, not substance and certainly not character development. The story also is lacking, which is unfortunate since screenwriter Paul Attanasio adapted it from Joseph Kanon’s deeper, richer novel, which in the right hands could have made for a fine translation.

Still, since style is what Soderbergh wants, style is what audiences get. Shot in black-and-white by cinematographer Peter Andrews, a pseudonym for Soderbergh (as is the film’s editor, Mary Ann Bernard), the movie is beautifully familiar-looking, with obvious care taken in achieving exactly the right look. The problem with this is that by working so diligently to nail that look, the movie comes off as a staged affectation. Everything else that should have mattered is ancillary.

The film follows Jake Geismer (George Clooney, wasted), a foreign correspondent for The New Republic who is back in Berlin to report on the Potsdam Conference. There, he meets two people who change his life – his shady driver, Tully (a shrill, sorely miscast Tobey Maguire), who enjoys rough sex and tough talk, as well as Jake’s former lover Lena Brandt, a femme fatale with black lips, a black flip and a blacker mood.

Lena is played by Cate Blanchett as if she tucked Marlene Dietrich’s remains into her soul – not to mention her throat. Her husky-voiced performance is pure mimicry, for sure, but at least it gives the movie an enjoyable jolt. With the actress’s angular body framed by the shadows and light, Blanchett proves consistently watchable, slouching and fretting through the role as if she were mildly annoyed.

Perhaps she was, because what Soderbergh has in store for her character are a bushel of convoluted secrets that threaten to bring down what’s left of the free world, but which never are satisfactorily explored. Like the good reporter he is, Jake goes through the motions of unearthing the answers to those mysteries, but in the shallow puddles of noir the movie courts, the result isn’t nearly as arresting as it could have been.

Grade: C

On Blu-ray

FLYBOYS, directed by Tony Bill, written by David S. Ward, 139 minutes, rated PG-13.

Tony Bill’s World War I movie, “Flyboys,” is at its best when it’s high up in its computer-generated skies. There, elegant, computer-generated fighter planes swoop dramatically through a ballet of computer-generated bullets.

The action scenes are brisk and beautiful – too beautiful, really – polished to such a degree that you watch the planes get hammered with gunfire, catch fire and blow smoke with the same emotional investment you might bring to, say, a video game featuring the same material.

Bill’s approach to the First World War is to ignore its grisly realities. People repeatedly are killed in this movie, but you don’t feel their loss. Instead, the film prefers to romanticize and glorify war, so much so that the end result is a movie sucked free of authenticity.

But what a lovely lack of authenticity. For instance, when a zeppelin looms high on the horizon in a later scene, you watch it knowing it’s the money shot, only here to offer the inevitable bloom of a beautiful explosion. You sit waiting in comfort with no sense of dread or suspense even when it finally is attacked. As it breaks apart in stunning flashes of persimmon, the undercurrent is that war is pretty, which is, shall we say, a bit fractured from reality and a good reason it’s so difficult to take the movie seriously.

There are other reasons, most of which stem from David S. Ward’s risible script. “Flyboys” is about the Lafayette Escadrille – a group of American expatriates who went to France in April 1916 to join the French air force. They include smoldering cowboy Blaine Rawlings (James Franco), boxer Eugene Skinner (Abdul Salis), stuffy Briggs Lowry (Tyler Labine), puffy-lipped Eddie Beagle (David Ellison), and Jensen (Philip Winchester), whose solid jaw belies a weakness he must eventually conquer.

Leading them is Capt. Thenault (Jean Reno), taunting them is Cassidy (Martin Henderson), who already has shot down his share of the enemy and has the attitude to prove it, and distracting them is Lucienne (Jennifer Decker), a lovely French lass who has stolen Blaine’s heart and thus presents the possibility for rescue.

This could have been a better movie if none of its characters were allowed to interact. But since they must, it’s in their stiff, rote conversations that the film becomes unredeemable and, at nearly 2 1/2 hours, unbearable. With the ongoing gloss, the tin dialogue and the broad echoes of “Star Wars,” “Flyboys” is about as far removed from the best examples of the genre – “Wings” and “Hell’s Angels” – as it could get.

Grade: C-

Visit www.weekinrewind.com, the archive of Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s reviews, which appear in print on Mondays and Fridays, on weekends in the Television section and online at bangordailynews.com. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.