Directed by:
Robert ZemeckisScreenplay:
Steven KnightCinematography:
Don BurgessComposer:
Alan SilvestriCast:
Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard, Jared Harris, Simon McBurney, Lizzy Caplan, Daniel Betts, Matthew Goode, Camille Cottin, August Diehl, Thierry Frémont (more)VOD (5)
Plots(1)
Allied agent Max Vatan falls for a French spy during World War II. When he learns she might be a double agent, he strives to prove her innocence. (Netflix)
Videos (29)
Reviews (11)
The triple combo of Robert Zemeckis, Brad Pitt and Nazis simply can't go wrong. Allied portrays the view of World War II from a different angle, which is always interesting. While the film is primarily a romantic drama, the chemistry between Pitt and the lovely Marion Cotillard works well here, the atmosphere is sombre and properly retro. There are only two action scenes, but they've got oomph, they're hard-hitting, and the party scene is one of the film's highlights. I'm a little disappointed that the film doesn't build up too much, the pace is rather slower, but I didn't get bored and that counts. The ending is properly shocking, which also rounds it up to four stars. Pluses: Excellent direction, excellent acting, retro atmosphere, R-rated. Minuses: longer running time, little action.70%
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If it weren’t for the botoxed Brad Pitt and several scenes that reeked of Hollywood, where for instance a couple makes love in the midst of a sandstorm in Morroco and Marion Cotillard then gives birth during an air raid of London, I would be literally excited about the movie. I haven’t seen such great war atmosphere for a long time, which actually is no wonder. Robert Zemeckis is a great director and he’s truly great at creating high-quality atmospheres. The ending of the movie was also literally aced, but I guess Angelina Jolie probably wouldn’t share my excitement…
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Allied is definitely a simplification of history, but in a nice retro-Hollywood guise that makes us turn a blind eye to that
fact. It is surprisingly not tacky, dramatic bordering on chilling due to the atmosphere of the period in which the story
takes place. It is also perfectly directed with cool professionalism and without the tear-jerking we might expect from
Robert Zemeckis, and without any grand love motifs we might expect from Alan Silvestri. Because such a well-written script with
such a powerful story doesn't need any of that. The ending totally got me.
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Robert Zemeckis is considered a visionary, but at the core, he is and will always be old-fashioned. And that old-fashionedness is insidious, because Allied pretend to be a Moroccan war trifle for a while, later transforms through intense action interludes into an honest drama, and then doesn't recoil from flirting with a good amount of tension. Over time, additional layers of storytelling are added, and in the end, there remains a taste of a pleasantly genre-defying spectacle that makes one forget about the overly drawn-out pace of the first act.
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Emotionally, it's a bit of a cold story that ironically, especially at first, moves quite slowly, but Zemeckis does repair his reputation after the botched The Walk, as Allied may not work as well as a romantic drama, but it certainly works as a WWII spy film. Brad Pitt, of course, as has been the case for the last 10 years, is appropriately wonderful, and Marion Cotillard is traditionally, by eye contact, properly inscrutable. It's not an exemplary hit, but it's filmmaking from a filmmaker who rarely gets it really wrong. It has all the classic filmmaking frameworks that meet at least the standard, plus an absolutely lavish form with at least three over-the-top sequences and a beautifully stylized Morocco set to Silvestri's music.
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