Meanwhile, "Ellis" is befriended at work by Ronnie ( Halina Reijn), who is bedding Müntze's number two man, SD officer Guenther Franken ( Waldemar Kobus) a fat pig war thief who is getting rich ripping off the Jews he sends to the death camps. He's lonely and the now blonde "Ellis" passes for Aryan cute. He's already lost a wife and two children to a British bomb. Müntze isn't stupid and sees Rachel for what she is almost immediately. All you smart filmstudents out there say it along with Cranky: "And they proceed to fall in love." It only reads tacky. She takes a job working for the man to do so. The Resistance taking any course possible, Rachel/Ellis volunteers to seduce Müntze and mine him for information. In course of events, she happens to meet one Ludwig Müntze ( Sebastian Koch), head of the Dutch version of the Gestapo. The set up moves like a bolt of lightning and quickly puts Rachel into the protective arms of the Dutch Resistance, led by wholesale grocer Gerben Kuipers ( Derek DeLint), Rachel adopts a nom de guerre - Ellis de Vries - and, posing as wife to one Hans Akkermans ( Thom Hoffman - we won't mention Akkermans again so remember the name when you see the film), smuggles guns and forged documents to other elements of the Underground. Moral coin and there is a compelling look at the operations of the Dutch resistanceĪnd the Dutch Gestapo's inhumanity to the "terrorists" (aka resistance Thusīegins the best film ever: the good guys are bad the bad guys are good theĬivilians in the middle aren't particularly thrilled with either side of the Rachel's hiding place is accidentally destroyed and she is forced to run. This mess if Jews had listened to Jesus." Soon after Black Book begins, The price of safety? Daily religious instruction in the New Testament, andĭaily reminders from the head of the household that she wouldn't be "in Stein ( Carice van Houten) hidden in an attic room in the Dutch countryside. This is where Verhoeven's Blackīook begins, with professional (and professionally recorded) singer Rachel Hid fellow citizens in attic hiding places. Jews were ordered turned in for deportation to the death camps, some good souls Of the people of Holland during the course of the Second World War. There are many stories in my Tribe about the heroic and very Christian behavior Black Book is the story of one Jewish woman, a composite character built from the true stories of three, who gives a new meaning to the concept of "hiding in plain site." but it's new to us Americans so here you go. With Oscar ten months off as we write this Black Book may or may not be eligible because of an international release last year. and we nearly got into fisticuffs with another critic who, after watching a different screening, dismissed the film as a "laughable Holocaust movie." We didn't find much to laugh at in Black Book, and the Holocaust sits way off to the side of this WWII drama like an ultimate booby prize. IN SHORT: The best film we've seen as Cranky. That being written, over the last twelve years of writing as Cranky we've seen (probably) close to three thousand films. We sat for Paul Verhoeven's Black Book because we like Verhoeven's Hollywood output. We stopped reviewing foreign language films about two years back because, frankly, y'all weren't interested in reading about or seeing 'em. Website: In Dutch, German, English and Hebrew. Screenplay by Paul Verhoeven and Gerard Soeteman Starring Carice van Houten, Sebastian Koch, Thom Hoffman
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